Coping With Nature

"We had a horrific amount of rain, but now we're going to have other issues. We'll be watching the Assiniboine carefully. It will take a couple days for the full impact to be clear."
Shari Decter Hirst, Mayor, Brandon, Manitoba

"The water is coming, it's ready to cross. I need pumps and no one is coming. My house is all I have."
"I'm stressed. So stressed."
Annette Warnatsch, Foam Lake, Saskatchewan

Heavy rains cut through farmland, roads and anything else that get in the way, including Highway 8, 22 Km south of Langenburg, Sask. | Robin Booker photo

"I pinned 'er in reverse and got the rear end across. I didn't give it much thought. We had to get to that guy, and no way you could cross it by foot."
Calvin Annetts, Alida, Saskatchewan

It has been raining non-stop in parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, creating a flooding situation that seems impossible to deal with. Emergency officials in Saskatchewan are struggling to even grasp the entire scope of the disaster. Manitoba is bracing itself for the downstream flow to fully hit. Canada's Prairie flood zone is in emergency mode with a vengeance. Some fifty communities in both provinces have been placed under a state of emergency.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards    Ditches overflow with rain water near a car dealership in Melville, Saskatchewan on Sunday, June 29, 2014 . Highways are closing and communities are declaring states of emergency after a deluge of rain drenched southeast Saskatchewan and parts of Manitoba.

Water levels in communities subject to flash floods have seen the water beginning to recede, while other towns along the Souris and Assiniboine rivers, tasked by nature to carry all of that water ultimately, were bracing for high water and additional flooding. To aid the misery, heavy rainfall has continued, leaving no opportunity for the drenched land to absorb the water that previously fell over a prolonged period.

Residents of Fenwood try to pump out the town. Laurie Stopa, a resident of the town said a neighbour 

woke him up at 4 a.m. on June 30. He said the water was just starting to run into the town, and within 

two hours his house was flooded. | Robin Booker photo

One of the larger cities within the flood zone, Brandon, Manitoba, was experiencing dozens of flooded basements and overland flooding. Annette Warnatsch, a 46-year-old truck driver for whom the wet spring and early summer has left her out of work driving for the oil industry is distraught at the rising water flooding over Highway 310 which she relied upon as a dike to protect her home.

SaskEnergy, the provider of natural gas in the area had disconnected 1,150 flooded homes by Monday though municipal departments don't know how many people have fled their homes without alerting authorities. On Sunday night, a drama of truly humans-against-nature proportions took place when an oil rig worker failed to notice a sign that a road he was on was closed.

His rig went flying at 80 kilometres per hour over a three-metre trench that had been dug across the road to allow water to be re-directed. The crashing sound from the impact alerted a couple living nearby, and when they investigated its source, realizing what had happened, they were able to rescue the badly injured driver out of the flooded ditch.

With the arrival of emergency responders a new emergency arose; how to reach the injured man at the home of the couple who had rescued him. Another man living nearby and who works in the oil industry got into his pickup truck driving it directly into the trench to form a makeshift bridge enabling emergency personnel to walk across.

Flood water flows over a grid road on the south side of Highway 16, 3 Km. west of Foam Lake, Sask. 

| Robin Booker photo

Volunteers tentatively walked across the hood, roof and box of the pickup truck: "I don't see we had much choice", commented volunteer firefighter Tracy Ross. Soon a forklift with extendable boom arrived and with its aid the injured man was hoisted to the ambulance to be taken to hospital in Oxbow, Saskatchewan.

As for Mr. Annetts' truck, it's still running though a little bashed up. "We just got 'er done and drank a few beers after", he said casually.