More than 200 homes issued evacuation notices in RM of Ritchot

More than 200 homes in the RM of Ritchot have been issued evacuation notices due to rising waters.

Many residents along Highway 200 are dealing with flooding on their properties. Pauline LaPalme is one of them. She needs to use a large truck to get across her flooded driveway in order to get home.

"There's just one part that's really, really deep," she said. "It's about halfway between these trees here and the spruce trees where it gets a little bit deeper, and that's the part that's a little bit more worrisome."

The municipality had declared a state of local emergency in April due to rising flood waters, and in an update Friday evening, issued evacuation notices to 231 homes within the community.

Mayor Chris Ewen said the evacuations are mainly due to homes losing access.

"We've only seen one home go underwater, and that was because the structural dike was not put up in time, but other than that it's 99 per cent because the road the infrastructure in front of the home is underwater," Ewen said.

He noted new evacuation notices are still going out daily in the area, as the river has not crested yet and bad weather is making conditions worse.

"We're still seeing a bit of a rise as of my understanding the wind did a lot of damage, and it created about a foot rise temporarily, so that's always something that we had to take into factor yesterday," Ewen said.

According to Ewen, there are currently about 300 people who have decided to leave their homes.

"With the flood situation, you know if you have everything, that checklist in place, you've got everything to last you for a couple of weeks and you feel comfortable staying in your home, by all means, that's your prerogative," added Ewen.

For residents planning to battle the floodwaters, the municipality said it has issued 140,000 sandbags to residents and has a stockpile of 240,000 sandbags which are available for free delivery.

While the municipality won't know the total cost of damages until the water recedes, Ewen estimates it's already up to several hundred thousand dollars.

"There's roads and infrastructure that's washed out. There's debris that needs to be cleaned up, you know, sandbag damage possibly from having the weight of the sandbags on certain areas or regions of land that could wash out. There's a lot, and it's going take some time to fix it," he said.

As for LaPalme, she's grateful she is only dealing with slight erosion on her driveway, as her neighbours have been forced to use boats.

"I feel bad for them because, especially down Prefontaine Road here, those people have been boating already for probably a week and a half, two weeks, boating their kids to the end of the driveway to catch the bus, boating to go to work." 

More information about the flood measures in the municipality can be found online.