Flood disaster stalks Wawanesa

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Brent Cullen: 'What do you do? You try to save the community. You can't walk away.'

WAWANESA -- The race is on to build a clay and sandbag dike to protect the west side of Wawanesa from being swallowed by the Souris River when it crests next week, at a height few could imagine until just days ago.

Pink ribbons tied to survey stakes mark the level to which the new earth dike has to be built within the next few days to hold back the Souris -- the dike has to come up by a staggering eight feet.

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Volunteers make sandbags by the dozen Tuesday at the Wawanesa Rec Centre.

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Hundreds of sandbags are piled for use in shoring up Wawanesa's dike Tuesday. The Souris River is forecast to crest in the picturesque town between July 7 and 11, flowing at up to 38,000 cubic feet per second. (WAYNE.GLOWACKI@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

To meet that height, Wawanesa, a picturesque Prairie town nestled in the Sipeweske Valley, is now clogged with heavy machinery and dump trucks hauling tons of sand and clay.

"I don't know if it's sunk in yet," said resident Brent Cullen, who packed up family essentials Tuesday to be out by 6 p.m. under a mandatory evacuation order.

He's one of 15 property owners told to get out. The local hospital and the personal care home have also been evacuated. For the foreseeable future, he and his wife will be living by night in the camper and sandbagging by day. They join the 2,937 Manitobans who as of Tuesday have been displaced by flooding this year.

"What do you do? You try to save the community. You can't walk away."

Cullen's neighbour was also furiously packing.

"I have no time to talk to you," she shouted from her window.

The Souris River is forecast to crest in Wawanesa between July 7 and 11 at a worst-case level of 38,000 cubic feet per second -- twice what was seen April 26 when the Souris first peaked during the spring flood. It peaked a second time June 16 at 25,600 cfs.

"We were sandbagging in April to protect everything and now it's June and we're still sandbagging," Candace Knautz said. "It's ridiculous."

Mayor Bruce Gullett said when the province first told town officials how high the dike had to come up, the news was met with disbelief and a heavy dose of skepticism.

Then everyone saw what happened upstream in Minot, N.D., and what the bloated Souris did there by forcing the evacuation of 11,000 of its residents and flooding 2,500 homes.

"We all know what needs to be done," Gullett said as truck after truck hauled gravel to the new dike. "All the weather patterns we've seen so far just convinces you it isn't stopping any time soon."

Behind the Wawanesa Rec Centre dozens of volunteers have made about 10,000 sandbags over the past two days and hope to make 5,000 more by today. They're stacked in piles on wood pallets to be hauled by tractors to the dike.

"If you asked me to describe Wawanesa a few days ago, I would have said it's a lovely little town," Gullett said outside the town's school, closed since April after groundwater seeped into the building's crawl space.

"Now, if you asked me today, well, we haven't seen anything like this. The last time we had bad flooding was in 1976. It lasted only four days."

On Tuesday, the province said the Souris River at Wawanesa was 14.4 feet higher than the normal level. At Melita to the south, it was 13.78 feet higher than normal; at Souris, it was 19.14 feet higher than normal.

The new dike at Wawanesa will be built to stand permanently, and although it will block the view of the river for those who live close to it, no one is complaining.

"It's fantastic," Ryan Heinrichs said. "It'll save us."

Heinrichs also had to be out by 6 p.m., moving his family to a hotel in Brandon until it's safe to return.

"We're taking what we need to wear," he said. "Anything of value is in storage."

The new dike will snake along the river's edge for about two kilometres, past the school and baseball fields to end where the town's new water park is being built on Water Street. Dozens of trees are being cut down to make way for the dike.

Again, no one is complaining.

"I've lived here all my life and I've never seen anything like it," 89-year-old Morley Roney said.

"And there's another surge coming," he said, showing how close his basement well is to overflowing because of the high water table. "And none of us really knows what will happen."

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 29, 2011 A3