By Patrick Book

B-Say-Tah resort village facing record flood levels, at least 10 people evacuated

Apr 26, 2011 | 6:59 AM

Around a dozen residents of the tiny resort village of B-Say-Tah are out of home as water eclipses record levels.

“It's a bit of a helpless feeling,” admits permanent resident Jim Muirhead. He was forced to evacuate after water flooded into his home. He's staying at a nearby bed and breakfast and checking the five pumps that are pushing water out of his home every few hours to make sure they're still running.

He says he would never have imagined the water would get this high.

“It didn't get into the house at all in 1974,” he explained Monday, referencing the previous high-water mark, a flood that impacted most of the Qu'appelle River system. “It was over a foot below the floor joists at that time but now it's up over the floor joists.”

He's among the roughly dozen or so residents who have been evacuated in the last week after a state of emergency was declared. Over the last week Muirhead says the water was rising as much as 10 to 12 inches a day.

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Mayor Ron Cox says a half-dozen homes and the town office are inaccessible, some with three to four feet of water having made it's way in.

“Some they had to take the furnaces out of their crawl spaces because of the water so there was no heat in them. Others they had problems with their septic systems.”

A mobile trailer was secured before the emergency was declared and the village is running its assistance, prevention, and response measures from there. About 30 volunteers, many local residents and others volunteers from as far as Regina, have been filling sandbags from 9 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. every day. About 7,000 have been distributed around the community so far.

Cox says the Watershed Authority believes the peak was reached Monday, but that water level might stay the same for a few more weeks still. Ice damage is the next problem residents will have to worry about.

“Thankfully it's stayed in one big piece so far but over the next few days we expect it to break up and that's when we expect it to cause significant destruction if the winds are fairly significant.”

That damage is already manifesting, however. From the back decks of some cottages you can already see trees that have been knocked down by ice. At least one boat house has also been levelled.

The King family, who owns a cottage just a few properties south of the flooded low area, has been using a pickaxe to break up the ice, which has already advanced to the edge of their porch. Even seven rows of sandbags couldn't keep the water out of their own boat house. They're also having to run two pumps around the clock to try and keep their crawlspace clear.

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