WINNIPEG — Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger is praising the work that has so far prevented ice jams on the province’s rivers from turning into major floods, but warns the worst may not yet be over.
Advance work by ice-smashing machines called Amphibexes, as well as ice drilling and dike building, has paid big dividends, Selinger said Sunday.
But he cautioned that Manitoba is only at the beginning of the flood season.
“I think everyone believes we’re better prepared than ever before, but nobody knows for sure what future events could occur,” Selinger told a news conference on Sunday, which was held in the council chambers of the Rural Municipality of St. Paul, northeast of Winnipeg.
“The ice challenge, we’re hoping, is completed here. But there could be other things that come down the river, so to speak.”
Selinger noted that the spring movement of ice hadn’t begun yet on the Assiniboia River, which merges with the Red River in Winnipeg.
The province’s flood forecast noted Sunday that the Red River, which has its headwaters south of the U.S. border, has only just crested at Fargo, North Dakota.
On Sunday, families along the Red River in the Rural Municipality of St. Andrews were allowed to return home. Approximately 50 homes in the Petersfield area north of Winnipeg remained under voluntary evacuation due to an ice jam south of where the river empties into Lake Winnipeg. Winnipeg, meanwhile, says it’s still hoping for 900 volunteers a day over the next few days to help sandbag flood-prone neighbourhoods.
A high-water advisory remained in effect on Sunday for the Souris River near Melita, in the southwest corner of Manitoba, and a high-water advisory was added Sunday for the lower Pembina River.
On Saturday, RCMP said they had recovered the body of a 61-year-old man who apparently died while attempting to cross a flooded road in his vehicle in the Rural Municipality of De Salaberry. Selinger urged people to be cautious when travelling in flood-affected areas.
Residents two provinces away in southeastern Alberta were also keeping their eyes on local waterways, hopeful to avoid a repeat of disastrous flooding that affected the area last year.
Dennis Mann, emergency services co-ordinator with Cypress County, said there’s still of lot of snow remaining in the nearby Cypress Hills.
The temperature in the area on Sunday was close 15 degrees.
“The creeks are running pretty good. But if the heat continues the way it has today, that could change,” Mann warns, noting volunteers helped fill an additional 10,000 sandbags over the weekend that are ready as soon as anyone needs them.