They built high. They have dikes. They thought they were ready for the flood.
But farmers in the path of the raging Red River were making tough choices earlier this week as flood forecasters raised their predictions for what many expect will be the deluge of the century.
The new forecast was enough to get Letellier, Man. grain farmer Ian Forrester packing on April 21. With the river rising feet overnight and the peak expected by April 25, he had no time to spare for reporters.
“My yard is not going to be high enough so I’m trying to figure out how to get it higher and how to clean the house out,” Forrester tersely explained.
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“I’m trying to find a semi trailer to put stuff into and I’m having no luck at all.”
He moved some grain he had earlier thought would stay high and dry to Marcel Hacault’s farm at Niverville.
Hacault said frost and high water tables made it nearly impossible for Forrester to build up the dike around his farm. Heavy equipment slithered around the top of the dike. Clay wasn’t dry enough to shape.
The provincial government forecasted the river to rise up to 1.5 metres higher than last year, or about one metre over historical 1979 flood levels.
Many farmhouses and yards in the Red River Valley have been built on large mounds about a metre higher than the 1979 levels.
Manitoba Agriculture’s flood co-ordinator said the small margin for error is putting farmers and officials on the edge.
“What we have now is probably an all-time worst flood, well in excess of the so-called 100-year mark,” said Gus Wruck.
The department is going through a list of 200 livestock producers in the area to determine their elevation and whether they need to evacuate.
Before the dire April 21 forecast, several dairy herds had been moved out of the flood’s path, Wruck said. But he expected other dairy, poultry and swine operations would have to pack up and move.
To complicate matters, good weather is melting snow, meaning runoff from fields will hit the Red River around the same time flood waters from the south arrive in the table-top-flat valley.
Hope it is enough
“We hope that when it gets here we’ll be ready, but obviously so did Grand Forks,” Wruck said, referring to the North Dakota city devastated by floods last weekend.
The reeve of one Manitoba municipality downstream from Grand Forks said television footage of the ruins gave an extra push to exhausted volunteers stacking sandbags and adding to dikes.
Bev Barrington, of Dominion City, said more than 200 people filled more than 15,000 sandbags on April 20 alone, almost doubling what had been piled in the previous two weeks of flood preparation.
“Some people have been working really, really hard,” he said.
“The ones outside the ring dike and the town, they’re a little bit disappointed because they think the work has been in vain.”
Dominion City was to begin voluntary evacuation Tuesday. People in the border town of Emerson also packed up and moved to Altona, Morden and Winkler.
Several other valley towns declared states of emergency, meaning they’ll be able to quickly evacuate if necessary.
The armed forces moved into the region to help fortify dikes with sandbags.
Barrington said the town expected flood waters to reach the top of the ring dike . “We’re protected for about three feet beyond that, but we don’t want to take too many chances.”
