Yorkton flooding puts downtown under water

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This article was published 03/07/2010 (5755 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

YORKTON, Sask. — An east-central Saskatchewan city was in “dire straits” Friday as a flash flood turned streets to rivers and sent people fleeing for higher ground, in some cases by canoe or in the bucket of a front-end loader.

The mayor of Yorkton declared a state of local emergency after a massive storm hit the area late Thursday afternoon, flooding five blocks of homes and apartments in the low-lying city core.

Downtown streets remained under water on Friday, said Michael Pasloski of the Red Cross. In some places it was waist deep.

“It was unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Pasloski.

“Most of the people that we’ve evacuated, they’ve lost everything. The water came above the basement level. It filled the basement and was coming on the main floor.

“These people were evacuated by canoes from their homes. That gives you an idea of the amount of water that came in such a short period of time.”

As of Friday afternoon, Mayor James Wilson said 130 people forced from their homes had reported to an evacuation centre. He feared that the number of people impacted was much higher though, because many were away on a long Canada Day weekend when the storm struck.

The city has flooded before after heavy rains, Wilson said. But this time, the water had nowhere to go because of all the wet weather the region has been experiencing.

“We are in dire straits today. As we speak, people cannot move back into their homes,” he said. “We have several people calling in today to city hall in various areas saying, ‘Help, what do I do?”‘

The storm also flooded cars, toppled trees, and knocked out power, but the hospital and nursing home were not flooded and neither was the town’s water treatment plant.

Residents of one flooded apartment building needed to be rescued in the scoop of a front-end loader, Wilson said.

Dean Clark, fire chief in Yorkton, said early reports indicated some homes were so extensively flooded the basements were washed out and the homes may not be fixable.

“When we get the water dealt with we’ll be able to assess that,” said Clark, who said the damage was freakishly intense given that Yorkton isn’t near large water bodies and doesn’t have a river running through it.

Clark said crews worked through the night, especially in the hardest-hit areas.

“We did pull power from about three square blocks of the affected area due to lots of water.”

He said homes in other low-lying areas throughout the city were flooded, but not as significantly as downtown.

Pasloski said he doesn’t know of anyone taken to hospital or otherwise hurt by the flooding.

He said the situation is still difficult for the 17,000 residents of the city, located northeast of Regina near the Manitoba border.

“The streets are closed. That central area, you cannot drive a vehicle through it. It will be quite awhile before traffic flow is normal throughout the city.”

The forecast also called for more rain and unsettled weather.

Severe weather continued to cause havoc in Saskatchewan on Friday, as a tornado destroyed about a dozen homes and damaged many others on the Kawacatoose reserve near Raymore, Sask.

There were no reports of injuries.

“It was so scary. Really scary,” said reserve resident Amanda Bunn. “Everybody hid in their basements.”

Bunn said the storm blew in over a period of about 20 minutes. The twister skipped across the reserve, hitting one street but then missing another. Just as suddenly, it was gone.

“It was nice out and then … it started to get real windy,” she said in a phone interview. “I was home with my three kids and all of a sudden … the rain started pouring. We saw debris flying by my windows so we ran to the basement.

Raymore is located 120 km north of Regina.

— The Canadian Press