City appeals for sandbaggers today

By: Bartley Kives Posted: 6:35 AM CDT Thursday, Apr. 16, 2009

The City of Winnipeg is again asking for sandbaggers to help build and raise dikes on three city rivers.

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The City of Winnipeg is again asking for sandbaggers to help build and raise dikes on three city rivers.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/04/2009 (6329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Winnipeg is again asking for sandbaggers to help build and raise dikes on three city rivers.

Volunteers who can sandbag this morning are asked to call 311 immediately, emergency measures co-ordinator Randy Hull said.

"We need to change the muscle," he said, thanking 600 volunteers who helped build or raise dikes along the Red River at Scotia Street and Glenwood Crescent on Wednesday.

KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Cheryl Deleon, left, and Leanne Tolentino, both Gr.9 students at St. Boniface Diocesan High School, struggle with heavy wet sandbags. Hundreds of high school students were bussed in from across the city to answer the desperate call for volunteers for several low areas in Winnipeg. — KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Cheryl Deleon, left, and Leanne Tolentino, both Gr.9 students at St. Boniface Diocesan High School, struggle with heavy wet sandbags. Hundreds of high school students were bussed in from across the city to answer the desperate call for volunteers for several low areas in Winnipeg.

The dikes on Scotia are about 35 per cent complete, while Glenwood dikes are just getting underway.

Dikes at all of those properties, along with several others along the Seine and Assiniboine Rivers, should be completed today, when the province predicts the Red River will rise to 22.2 feet at the James Avenue monitoring station.

The Red is now expected to crest over the weekend in Winnnipeg at 22.6 feet James, about 1.9 feet below the 1997 flood level.

All told, 100 Winnipeg properties have been asked to raise or build dikes in the northern half of Winnipeg since the province revised its flood forecast on Tuesday.