Insurance money spent, family waits for provincial flood aid

Three months after a once-in-a-lifetime rainstorm battered her home and caused extensive flooding, J’aime Killbery is still picking up the pieces while she waits for financial relief from the provincial government.

Killbery lives in Balmoral, north of Stonewall, in the rural municipality of Rockwood, one of the communities hardest-hit by the June 9 deluge. The RM declared a state of emergency after a record-breaking 250 mm of rainfall caused sewer backups and overland flooding.

The damage to the family home was immense. Their fully finished basement was destroyed by sewage water, meaning the walls and flooring needed to be ripped out and replaced.

While family is handling some repairs themselves to cut costs, every repair is expensive, Killbery said.

She said she sought payment both from her private insurance and from the province’s disaster financial assistance program within a week of the flood.

The insurance firm quickly paid out and the money was spent on replacing walls, installing insulation and repairing the electrical system.

She’s paying out of pocket while she waits for the government to inform her whether any part of the remaining costs will be covered by disaster aid.

“We’re trying really, really hard to stay super positive. We got our cheque from the insurance for $20,000, but now, we’re at the point where the money’s out,” she told the Free Press, getting emotional.

“When is the province going to tell us what they’re going to give us? That’s the hardest part.”

It’s been a difficult time financially and emotionally. The family scaled backed a trip to Fredericton to watch her daughter play baseball: only one member will go to save money. Her son, whose bedroom was in the basement, has struggled to sleep in the living room for almost three months.

Replacing her partner’s laptop, which was destroyed by water, has created anxiety.

“We’re cutting so many corners on stuff because we don’t know what we’re going to get from (the province), and so we want to be as careful as possible, because I don’t want to go into financial devastation over something like this,” she said.

She believes support will arrive — she received one of the initial $500 cheques the province handed out immediately after the flooding, and an inspector with the province visited her home for the first time about two weeks ago — but she wishes there was more communication from the government.

She wants to know when she will get the money. She said she feels for her neighbours, too.

“My neighbour, he isn’t even back in his house. He only got power back on last week, and it’s still not even livable, and he’s at the point where he’s just like, ‘So when is (the province) going to tell me whether it’s even worth it at this point?” she said.

The province said it has received in excess of 2,500 applications for disaster aid. The deadline to apply is Oct. 8, and applicants will be able to submit invoices and expenses related to the storm until July 2027.

A separate flood recovery program is open to people from select communities who don’t qualify for disaster aid.

Lisa Naylor, the minister responsible for emergency management, couldn’t say Friday how many applicants have received payouts.

“We created a new program that’s going to be millions of dollars of payout to Manitobans for incidents that have never been paid out in the past,” she said.

“The process of going through those claims, doing the inspections, we still have the same size department who has to process far, far more claims than we’ve had to process in the past.”

Fifty-two local states of emergency were declared and more than 1,300 kilometres of roads were affected, including 100 highway locations and 63 damaged bridges.

Eight highway segments and three bridges remain closed.

“We will certainly have our own funding claims (to the federal government) for all of those highways that needed to be repaired as well,” the minister said.

Naylor said she expects to have more information after the deadline for applications has passed.

On Friday, Eleanor Olszewski, the federal emergency management minister, was in Winnipeg to announce that Ottawa will match the $740,000 Manitobans donated to the Red Cross for flood relief.

The province had committed to matching those funds, resulting in a total of $2.2 million in additional support that will go to flood relief.

“This funding will support with respect to recovery, community outreach, mental health, psycho-social care, assistance for vulnerable residents, and a lot of other recovery systems as well,” Olszewski said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca