Online NewsHour: Flooding in Canada -- April 22, 1997

FIGHTING THE FLOODS

MAY 5, 1997
TRANSCRIPT

The smaller communities of Southern Manitoba, Canada, were consumed last week by flood waters that have formed a 350 square mile lake. Fred de Sam Lazaro of KTCA-St. Paul-Minneapolis reports.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, one city's fight against the flood. Fred de Sam Lazaro of KTCA-St. Paul-Minneapolis reports.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The Red River didn't stop when it left North Dakota. The smaller communities of Southern Manitoba, Canada, were consumed last week by flood waters that have formed a 350 square mile lake. But the raging Red hit a wall, almost literally, as it approached the city of Winnipeg. In sharp contrast to the devastated U.S. communities to the South, this city of 650,000 has tamed the swollen Red River. It's an engineering feat that's allowed most citizens to witness its record heights from a safe distance and prompted nervous optimism in Mayor Susan Thompson.
SUSAN THOMPSON, Mayor, Winnipeg: Everything at this point has held, but that's very careful language I just used; at this point, it's held. The city remains vigilant in its battle with the Red.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The city's vigilance dates back 47 years, the last flood of the century here. One hundred thousand people have to be evacuated, and more than ten thousand homes were lost. City water chief Doug McNeil says the 1950 flood prompted a comprehensive master plan to fortify the city. For example, streets along the river were built to serve as dikes.
DOUG McNEIL, Winnipeg Water Department: Earth clay-filled material was taken out of what was a level park at that time to build up primary dikes against the river. And one of those primary dikes is Lindale Drive, right here.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So just got incorporated into building your streets practically.
DOUG McNEIL: Basically, they raised these streets along the river to a higher level to ward off the rising water levels in 1950. And since then, we have extended that primary diking system throughout the city as more developments have come on stream.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Okay. So what we're looking at here is the dike, in effect, working.
DOUG McNEIL: Oh, absolutely. And this dike is protecting the neighborhood that you see behind us, several hundred homes in this neighborhood, until the ground reaches a naturally higher level.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The system of primary dikes was only one of several flood management measures launched by the city and the province of Manitoba. City spokesman Terry Aseltine says by far the largest of these was a manmade channel called the Flood Way.
TERRY ASELTINE, City of Winnipeg: There's a huge excavation project. It took about eight years to build, cost $68 million, was completed in 1968. And what the Floodway does is it diverts the water. East of the city there are floodgates at the entrance to the city. The flood gates come up from the riverbed, stop the flow of water coming into the Red River, and divert approximately half of that water around the city to the East and to the North, where the Floodway takes the water back into the river again past the city.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So on the other side of the floodgates the water level this year is some ten to fifteen feet lower as it flows into Winnipeg. Also helping lower the level is a diversion north of Winnipeg's other river, the Assiniboine. But Mayor Thompson says it became clear early that the elaborate infrastructure was not going to be enough to thwart this year's flood.
MAYOR SUSAN THOMPSON: And starting in December we put into place the worst case scenario because we understood that the ground could not absorb the water; that we had more snow than we've had in a hundred years, and that we would have factors to deal with which will be unknown. But we knew that we would be starting with would perhaps be a crisis developing into a disaster and perhaps ending up in a catastrophe if one were to try and define this. And, as it stood, we had to manage a crisis.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: City and province officials marshaled an all out effort to add several layers of perfection. Army troops with heavy equipment constructed a 10-mile long dike Southwest of the city to prevent an end run around existing walls.
SPOKESMAN: Make sure to maintain the shape of the dike. Try to avoid straight walls.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Along river front property in the city soldiers, volunteers, and city workers laid 6 million sandbags. The city's flood management drew praise from homeowners like Pat Ferguson.
PAT FERGUSON, Homeowner: They had done their homework weeks ago in April. We received notices about our elevation and the fact that we would be having to sandbag, and we were pretty skeptical, thinking there's no way because our property is, oh, a hundred feet back from the river, and there's a fairly gentle slope, and they insisted, and boy, they sure were right. And they were so organized in the production of the sandbags and in providing us with instruction how to build the dikes. They had sort of clinics down at the community club, so the residents could go and learn. And they kept us informed with notices delivered by hand, people's houses, as well as video on the cable TV channel, and I've been really impressed.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The river consumed much of Ferguson's backyard, including a swimming pool. And although the level of sandbags was higher than the river, the constant pressure has caused seepage. Two sump pumps send the water back over the wall. The key worry is whether the pumps and the sandbags can hold off the river for the two weeks it will take to recede. Taking no risks, the city built a second clay dike in front of homes in Ferguson's neighborhood, one of the few that's been evacuated in Winnipeg. The effort has not managed to save smaller communities outside the barricades. That's led to charges that rural and peripheral communities were sacrificed to save the city. Mayor Thompson says nothing could have stopped the ‘97 floods in those areas.
MAYOR SUSAN THOMPSON: This is more water than we've ever seen in a hundred years, and as best as you try to manage it through modern engineering techniques, which we had with the Floodway, you can't manage something that's 15 miles across, six to seven feet deep coming at you. You can manage a part of it, but you certainly cannot manage all of it.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In fact, despite all the vigilance in well-fortified Winnipeg, city officials expect they will lose a few dozen homes. That still is a fraction of the damage sustained in much smaller Grand Forks, North Dakota. U.S. officials say flood management projects have been proposed for a study but have moved slowly in Grand Forks. The main problem is the price tag in today's dollars of hundreds of millions, affordable perhaps for larger cities but prohibitive for smaller ones.


Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station.

PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved.