As floods in Manitoba and Saskatchewan close roads and force people from their homes, members of one congregation are struggling to find ways to deal with the crisis in their community.
Rev. Barb Alston, minister at Melita, Man., offered an update on the situation. In an email sent July 3, she writes:
This is a very wide-spread situation. There are people who are evacuated and people who are isolated in place.
We live between Hartney and Souris. I work in Melita and area. There are a lot of problems, namely road closures and high water.
At Hartney , the highway was cut to let water away from the town. Luckily, this part of the highway is a bypass, so there is still access on Highway 21 through Hartney.
We have two congregation members who are cut off from access and at home. One member has left his home and is staying with his son in another town. One lady left her farm home and is staying at a friends house that is presently vacant in Melita. This is just in one very small congregation.
I talked to a lady yesterday who had abandoned her house out in the country, between Pierson, Man., and Gainsborough, Sask. It’s an older house, and she worked and saved the basement in the flooding of 2011, but this time it was too much. She is renting a hotel room and rented a car from a local dealer. Her husband is in the personal care home in Melita. Her sons are looking for an apartment for her and when they can they will rescue what furniture they can from her abandoned house.
We have a funeral in our congregation; thankfully we can get to cemetery by an alternate route as there is a bridge out on the way to cemetery. Some of our congregation may not be able to attend this funeral.
Parts of the town of Melita have been threatened by the rising of a creek. Now the Souris River is rising, so areas along the Souris River are starting to be sandbagged as a precaution.
“Overland flooding was the initial problem from very heavy rainfalls. Now the rivers are rising as they take in the water from the various drainage basins.Water at Melita today is still high, and the bridge on Highway 3 over the Souris River is still okay. Water on the Souris is high at Hartney. They have diked the new road to the new bridge there that is under construction.
There are a lot of crews working to make the roads that can be travelled as safe as possible and to make sure roads that are closed are properly barricaded. Safety is of the utmost concern.
In the Pierson area, fuel is not to be used for anything but emergencies or for construction equipment being used for roads.
Anything connected to oil industry seems to be shut down for the most part. You can’t pump oil out if trucks can’t get in to take it out. So lots are off work and related industries of accommodation etc. are greatly affected.
The longterm situation is really a disaster for the farming community. With a wet spring already and some unseeded acres, now some of the crops that were coming along are flooded. There will be a lot of farmers with no crop at all. As well, this affects availability of pasture for cattle. I have heard of herds having to be moved and the loss of some livestock in the flash-flooding. This will also certainly result in a feed shortage because of a greatly reduced hay crop in the area.
This is a big area of Manitoba and Saskatchewan involving a lot of people over a long period of time. It is overwhelming to even think about, let alone experience.
