Fixing damaged bridge a top priority for province

Infrastructure Minister Lisa Naylor said Friday officials from her department “immediately assessed the damage and are developing a repair plan” for a key bridge on Highway 83 northwest of Inglis.

In a statement, she noted a contractor has been hired and work is happening throughout the night to return access to the bridge.

“Restoring critical roads and bridges is a top priority, and work on the Highway 83 bridge is being done as quickly as possible alongside other essential infrastructure impacted by flooding,” said Naylor.

The bridge over the Shell River was closed after being damaged by flooding in the Rural Municipality of Riding Mountain West.

Reeve Grant Boryskavich said the riverbanks that support it were washed away in hours on Thursday.

“At 11 o’clock in the morning the embankment had started to wash and by five o’clock that night, you could start to see the pillars,” he said about the bridge, roughly 320 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

Like Swan River and Minitonas, Boryskavich said the community was hit hard by the massive storm that dropped almost 150 millimetres of rain on the Parklands region. The area had to deal with water flowing from Saskatchewan as well, causing the Shell River to swell to more than three times its normal flow.

“We just seemed to get hammered a little more than anybody else,” he said.

Two other bridges have been washed out, roads that were just repaired following the spring melt have been ruined and at least one campground has been flooded, Boryskavich said.

morgan.modjeski@freepress.mb.ca