Peguis members in limbo after flooding

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This article was published 22/06/2022 (917 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MORE than 1,400 people remain in hotels across the province weeks after Peguis First Nation was hit by flooding.

They left the 5,000-person community in early May. Clean-up is underway, but the urgent issue is repairing the road network, which was “devastated,” Peguis First Nation Chief Glenn Hudson said, making it impossible for garbage trucks, septic vehicles and school buses to travel everywhere.

“The provincial roads, and a lot of that work, needs to be completed, because obviously, the province has a lot of resources in terms of money, but also people to be able to build up our roads,” he told the Free Press.

“We had planned our community to be (ready for) the one-in-100-year flood in the past, but now this time around, we have to step it up and go to the one-in-200-year flood.”

Seventy homes will need to be rebuilt and hundreds more are seriously damaged.

The federal government is responsible for covering the tab.

The plan is to relocate residents into temporary housing in neighbouring communities until their homes are repaired.

Hudson said that could take one to three years.

“They have nowhere else to go when they’re in hotels in the city. We try and organize as many activities for them as possible,” he said. “But when they leave home, they don’t know whether they’re returning home.”

A damage estimate for the community, 190 kilometres north of Winnipeg, is being tabulated, but Hudson said he wasn’t able to give details.

“Obviously, this is the biggest flood we’ve ever experienced, (but) in the past 20 years, we’ve flooded 11 times,” he said. “So it’s about damn time that we look at addressing the long-term flooding mitigation.”

The wet weather has continued to create problems across Manitoba. Last week, the Rural Municipality of North Norfolk to declare a state of emergency after roads were washed out by rain.