MORRIS, Man. – It’s obvious when visiting Chris and Lorne Hamblin that the flood of 1997 has not been forgotten.
Photos of their flooded farmyard near Morris are pinned to a bulletin board near the side entrance to their home. They depict the Hamblins’ farm covered by a vast lake with out buildings and the road to the yard submerged in brown water.
“You can see the river here,” said Chris, pointing to a framed photo of what was their farmyard on the west side of the Red River before the flood.
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“But in 1997, this whole thing (their yard) was water.”
Although there is only a 10 percent chance of a repeat of a 1997 level flood, record snowfall in North Dakota and extremely high soil moisture levels have convinced flood forecasters with Manitoba Water Stewardship that this spring’s melt will resemble 1979, the second largest flood in the province’s recorded history.
A 15 centimetre snowfall last week across much of Manitoba raised fears that a repeat of 1997 was imminent. However, flood forecasters say a spell of below zero weather in late March should delay the melt and mitigate the severity of the 2009 flood.
While that is reassuring for Manitobans, residents of the Red River Valley take more comfort in the fact that they are much more prepared for high water than they were in 1997.
After that record flood, which flooded out Lorne’s parents’ home located on the same farmyard, the couple decided it was time to move to higher ground.
“Where we used to live was right in here … so you can see how wide the river was there,” said Chris, pointing to a map showing the extent of the 1997 flood.
“With a great deal of effort, we could’ve stayed where we were.”
Instead, in 1999 the Hamblins moved their farmyard to its current location on the east side of the Red River, across from the town of Morris.
The Red River Valley is one of the flattest places on earth, but the Hamblins’ new home is a rarity in the valley because it is 20 to 30 metres higher than Morris’ elevation and safely above potential flood waters.
The Hamblins’ story is similar to hundreds of Red River Valley farmers who took action after the 1997 flood, a disaster that forced 75,000 people from their homes and caused an estimated $500 million in damage.
“Farmyards and houses are pretty much all protected now,” said Chris, which explained the absence of sandbag crews or any obvious flood preparations last week in Morris, even as thousands of volunteers built massive dikes around Fargo, N.D., 300 kilometres south.
For the last month, provincial officials have promoted the message that the Red River Valley is ready for spring flooding, thanks to time and money spent after 1997.
“The province has made significant investments in flood protection measures such as community ring dike improvements,” intergovernmental affairs minister Steve Ashton said in a release.
Many farmers rebuilt their homes on elevated mounds, commonly referred to as pads, at the height of the 1997 flood waters plus 0.6 metres. Others abandoned their farmyards and moved into Morris, Rosenort, Dominion City, St. Adolphe or one of the other 15 communities now protected by ring dikes.
With all the preparations made years ago, the only flood proofing activity visible last week from Highway 75, the primary route between Winnipeg and the U.S. border, was a bulldozer and a backhoe working on a levy to protect a couple of greenhouses.
“We had made some dike preparation last fall, in anticipation of some flooding, but obviously we didn’t go quite high enough,” said Rob MacLeod, who runs Glenlea Greenhouses with his wife, Sue.
However, the Hamblins said the general sense of calm in the valley doesn’t mean producers are complacent about flooding.
They are moving grain from storage bins that will likely be cut off when roads flood.
The Hamblins are also worried the water might be higher and stick around longer this year because the new ring dikes and house pads in the valley create more barriers to water flow and reduce the area in which it can be stored.
“There’s now dikes around St. Agathe, and Rosenort has a huge area that they’ve diked,” Chris said.
” And Winnipeg has their big dike. All of that holds water back.”
