Twin Lakes residents too distraught to describe flood destruction
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/06/2011 (5573 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The first residents were allowed to return briefly to their homes in Twin Lakes Beach Friday. They came. They saw. They left. They told reporters they were too emotionally devastated to describe it.
Manitoba’s Urban Search and Rescue Team took media in next. Lake Manitoba has pushed its shoreline over the hump of sandbars where houses and cottages are built. The shoreline pushed over the road and spilled into the marsh on the other side.
It’s pushed past the marsh and right into Frances Lake.
What’s left is cottages ripped off pilings. And water where lanes, a park and dozens of driveways used to be.
For the worst-hit properties, the fronts of houses that faced the lake are gone, ripped off, walls and contents tossed into the waves. Sand from torn sandbags is all over exposed floors where furniture used to sit.
“We’re seeing devastation, a natural disaster in these areas, and a number of the cottages and homes that are completely destroyed,” said Tobin Praznick, manager of rescue operations for the province’s search and rescue team.
The best his crew can do with the worst-hit structures is shore them up with temporary pilings.
“We’re trying to support some of these cottages and homes to get homeowners in here to collect some of their belongings,” Praznick said.
It’s a recovery operation.
In total, some 60 cottages and homes along the Twin Beaches Road that stretches south into the RM of Woodland are at best, marooned.
There is no road access, except by search and rescue Flex Tracks, flatbeds mounted on rollers like army tanks. Not even pickup trucks can move through water that sits one-third of a metre deep over the road into these once idyllic retreats.
A crew of 120 engineers, rescue crews, plus a canine unit of six dogs on stand-by, move from house to house.
Some houses are so badly battered the crews just walk on by. They can’t risk their own safety.
Clean up is likely to be a lengthy process.
As crews move from house to house, getting material in to shore up structures long enough for owners to see them is challenge even for the recovery team.
“We started yesterday,” Praznick said on Friday. “It’s still to be determined how long it’s going to take.”