The creative approach to flood preparations

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This article was published 01/04/2011 (5395 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Rural Municipality of Cartier is using a creative approach and some extra helping hands to prepare for the threat of spring flooding.

Coun. Dale Fossay recently spearheaded a project to convert an old fertilizer spreader into a sandbag-making machine.

Fossay said he was convinced there had to be a faster way to make sandbags after dealing with the flood of 2009.

“When we did this two years ago with the 2009 flood, we just gave people sand, gave them a few empty bags and told them good luck,” Fossay said. “But I thought we could have a better way to fill the bags for people.”

Fossay said was the spreader was converted by Tom Hofer and his father Nat, who both live on the Starlite Hutterite Colony. They received donations of equipment for the project from Valmar Airflow, Toromont and Jamesvalley colony in Elie, Western Grain Dryer and T.B. Tire of Starbuck and Princess Auto.

It cost between $600 and $700 to convert the spreader and the machine can fill approximately 10 sandbags per minute, according to Fossay. The machine has worked so well, in fact, that Hofer has already begun converting a second spreader.

It took Hofer about a week to convert the first machine and work is already well underway on the second one. The idea for machine came about following a brainstorming session he had with Fossay this past winter.

“Me and Dale sat down a couple of months ago and came up with the idea of using a fertilizer spreader for this purpose,” Hofer said. “It was a pretty unique idea and it was pretty easy to do.”

Hofer said it takes about four or five people to operate the machine.

The two sandbag machines will be added to Cartier’s growing flood fighting arsenal.

Chief administrative officer Anne Burns said last week that flood preparations were already well under way in the municipality.

“We now have our new steamer, we’ve rented four huge pumps and our public works guys have now been trained on how to fill tiger tubes (inflatable dikes),” said Burns, who is lead spokesperson for the CaSH District, which includes joint emergency measures organizations in Cartier, St Francois Xavier and Headingley.

Burns said that in addition to 100,000 sandbags being made at a large sandbagging facility at Rockwood Institution in Stony Mountain — 30,000 will go to Cartier, 10,000 to SFX, 10,000 to Headingley and the rest to be stored until they are needed — the CaSH district has set up an Emergency Measures centre.
Burns added that the province has begun dike enhancements along the Assiniboine River from the Baie St. Paul Bridge to Portage la Prairie. The enhancements will flood markers for residents in the Lido Plage area.

“The one thing we got Manitoba Water Stewardship to do was mark the 1976 flood levels for people in the Lido Plage area along the river to give residents an idea of how high to dike,” she said, adding all three municipalities are currently working on clearing drains while Headingley has marked flood levels for its residents as well.

prescott.james@canstarnews.com