By paNOW

Cumberland House evacuation underway

Jun 22, 2013 | 10:22 AM

Cumberland House is preparing to evacuate as flood waters race toward the community located along the Saskatchewan River in the north east part of the province.

People from the village of Cumberland House and the Cumberland House Cree Nation will be moved to hotels and shelters in Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and Regina, if necessary.

Provincial officials are saying that between 2,000 and 2,200 residents will be affected, however not all of these people will be evacuated from the area. Some will remain to help mitigate flood damage to municipal infrastructure, which has the potential to be severe.

Officials are hoping to have everyone out by Tuesday, as sections of the community’s only access road, Highway 123, is expected to be underwater by Wednesday.

This will completely isolate the community, which was one of the major factors in enacting the evacuation, said the province’s deputy commissioner of emergency management and fire safety Colin King. “The decision was made to evacuate the majority of the community because they expect to be isolated for the amount of time that the road would be cut off,” he said.

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Compounding this problem is a weight restriction at the Cumberland House airport which prevents large aircraft from being used in the evacuation effort or to transport supplies.

Evacuation Plan

Because of the poor condition of the area’s roads, evacuees will be brought from Cumberland House to Nipawin in vans. From there, they will be transferred into larger buses and transported to their end location, said Linda Korney, manager of emergency social services for the ministry of social services.

Prince Albert will likely begin seeing “priority evacuees,” who will be evacuated first, in the next several days, “Our first course of action would be to move into Prince Albert hotels,” said Korney.

As of Saturday, the ministry of social services was “Confirming the number of priority folks that may not be suitable for congregate shelter facilities and those will likely come out first to hotels”, said Korney. High priority evacuees include people on medication, families with small babies and expecting mothers.

Buildings on Prince Albert’s SIAST campus are being considered for a congregate shelter facility, said Korney, who indicated Prince Albert could be a temporary home to hundreds of evacuees. “Between hotels and the SIAST facility it may run around three to four hundred people.”

Based on previous flooding events in the Cumberland House area, people could be out of their homes for at least a week, “It’s anticipated that it could be from a week to several weeks long,” said King.

Cumberland House in the crosshairs

Flood water from Alberta is currently moving through the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers and will enter the province very soon. Both rivers will be flowing at well above normal rates, with the South Saskatchewan approaching record levels.

“You take those two situations combined, you have the North Saskatchewan that’s going to be flowing quite high and then the South where we’re having to push out 2,000 cubic metres per second from Lake Diefenbaker and those flows eventually meet up in the Saskatchewan River near Cumberland House,” said Patrick Boyle with the Water Security Agency.

Consequently, the flow rate at Cumberland House could be up to seven times higher than normal, said Boyle. This will cause some kind of flooding event, the severity of which is impossible to determine until the flood water makes its way into Saskatchewan.

North Battleford is also expected to be impacted by the fast rising North Saskatchewan River.

“Our initial estimates on the North Saskatchewan River showing between 2,000-2,500 cubic metres per second and at this rate there is a risk that those high flows could affect the town of North Battleford’s water supply,” said Patrick Boyle.

In Prince Albert, the North Saskatchewan River will be noticeably higher but because there is much more storage capacity near Prince Albert, the Water Security agency isn’t expecting any major issues.

sleslie@panow.com

On Twitter: @_seanleslie