LETELLIER, Man. – Emergency vehicles patrol the streets. Caterpillars and trucks add two metres to the earthen barricade that surrounds the town. Soldiers fill sandbags. Airforce helicopters land, take off and fill the air with ominous thumping. Refugees stream through checkpoints in cars packed to the rooftops.
It is not a war zone, but it feels like one.
“The town is closed,” said Denis BarnabŽ, municipal councillor for the south-central Manitoba community.
Karen BarnabŽ is one of the town residents who has been orderd to leave her home.
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“It’s so hard. So hard to just move everything up and out and then just go … not knowing when you’ll be back. Not knowing when you will see loved ones again. I guess this is what a war is like.”
For those left behind, Letellier has become a flurry of activity. If the trucks were not green, if the people did not wear badges on their chests and the mood was not so apprehensive, this could be described as a booming prairie town. People and vehicles are rushing around, grain is being hauled out, gas and supplies are being sold in record quantities.
It is not a spring seeding frenzy, but it feels like one.
“We’ve never seen it so busy here. It is normally such a quiet little town. This is more than harvest and seeding rolled into one,” said Debbie Bissonnette, the postmistress and operator of the local gas station.
Despite the war against the water and despite the heightened activity of the local economy this is neither war nor boom. It is a disaster. Described by government officials as a one-in-500 year flood the Red River has left its banks.
And it’s on the doorstep of Letellier.
