The City of Winnipeg is filling thousands of sandbags in preparation for spring flooding. A total of 85,000 sandbags are expected to be filled by the end of next week.
The Public Works building on Pacific Avenue has produced 5,000 already, but only 500 have been picked up by concerned Winnipeggers prepping their properties ahead of time.
Provincial flood forecasters warned of a 10 per cent chance of the Red River’s cresting as high as 20.5 feet above normal winter ice levels at the James Avenue monitoring station.
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Severe flooding is a situation Helene Hoffer knows all too well.
Hoffer and her husband bought their property on Kilkenny Drive ten years ago. She said, since then, they have had to sandbag at least five times.
“We were told it only happens once every 250 years,” said Hoffer. She said they figured since the last massive flood in 1997 had just hit, they would be safe for a long time.
“We were wrong. Every spring, in March, April, May… we start to regret buying the property,” she said.
Hoffer said they had 200 people helping to sandbag their property last time and it took the entire day.
But it’s not just homeowners who are prepping for the flood; emergency responders have taken on new hover training. STARS air ambulance was brought in during the 2009 floods but didn’t become a mainstay in the province until 2011. Starting next week, all 18 crew members will undertake special hover training to learn how to get in and out of the chopper quickly and safely when there is nowhere to land.
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