Marie Bohnet lost two acres of grapes when the skies opened and drenched southwestern Saskatchewan last month.
She and her husband, Marty, own Cypress Hills Vineyard and Winery and spent nearly two weeks without customers after the flood washed out their road.
They were back in business July 1 but Bohnet said the final losses, including lost business, could be around $200,000.
“We just put $47,000 into getting the road fixed,” she said, adding that damage to a shop and greenhouse totals about $50,000.
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Bohnet said they hope the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program will help pay for lost infrastructure such as irrigation equipment.
More than 70 Saskatchewan municipalities have declared disasters this year, mostly because of heavy rain. The Raymore and Ka wacatoose First Nation areas are dealing with tornado damage.
Mieka Torgrimson, acting director of the Saskatchewan Emergency Management Organization, said the program pays up to $160,000 per claim for damage from natural disasters not covered by other insurance.
For farmers, this includes repairs to land from water erosion, emergency transport of feed and water to livestock and stored grain or hay.
Application must be made within six months of the disaster and repairs completed within one year. Adjusters assess each claim to determine eligibility. Generally, claimants get an advance payment of 40 percent of the total eligible amount.
In the Maple Creek area, the government fast-tracked payments of $3,000 so people could get started on cleanup and repair.
Premier Brad Wall told reporters the cost to government from weather damage is about $283 million.
That includes private property damage, $20 million for highway repair and $60 million for municipal infrastructure repair. He expects those costs to rise.
Wall has already told prime minister Stephen Harper the province will make a global application to the federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program, which is a cost-shared formula that kicks in to help provinces pay disaster costs.
The province will argue that flooding this spring was part of one event. Federal funding will kick in, whether that application is accepted or not.
Provinces pay the first $1 per capita under DFAA. Ottawa pays 50 percent of the next $2 per person, 75 percent for the $2 after that and 90 percent of remaining expenditures.
A $10 million disaster in a province of one million people would cost the province $3 million and Ottawa $7 million.
Wall said Harper understood what Saskatchewan is dealing with this year after an aerial tour of the Yorkton area last week.
“I was able to tell him that in the last eight weeks, we’ve got a year’s worth of rain in Saskatchewan,” Wall said. “I was able to tell him we’re 200 percent of normal rainfall.”
Yorkton mayor James Wilson briefed Harper after 70 percent of homes there were damaged when 150 millimetres of rain fell in 20 minutes.
Near Raymore, Dale Buitenhuis said he didn’t carry insurance on his farm buildings damaged by a July 2 tornado.
Former owners Lorne and Betty Terschuur, who have insurance, still live in the home on the property. The 300-km/h tornado winds destroyed the yard’s shelterbelt, blew open the front door and broke windows.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” Betty Terschuur said. “The Father’s Day cards standing on the buffet in the dining room didn’t fall over.”
But Buitenhuis’s grain bins are gone and his Quonset was crushed.
“I will be happy to take all I can get from (the PDAP),” he said.
The Alberta government has announced its largest disaster recovery program in history.
The Southern Alberta Disaster Recovery Program contains $200 million for severe flooding in designated municipalities that occurred June 15-21. Another $3.5 million is available through the Spring South Eastern Alberta Disaster Recovery Program for flooding from extreme moisture April 13-May 31.
Individuals and businesses are eligible for a maximum of $300,000 each.
Manitoba’s Disaster Financial Assistance program offers a claim maximum of $200,000 to cover costs such as evacuation and restoration, including farm buildings.
