It isn’t just Manitoba struggling to stay above water this spring.
Residents in the Sowchea Creek area on Sowchea Road are sandbagging and pumping water from basements in efforts to hold the water at bay.
Harold Prince said he and his wife Darlene had been working on keeping the water back for four days, sandbagging along an oxbow in the creek next to their property.
But he said a windstorm on Wednesday night knocked down a couple of large trees and blocked off part of the creek, sending the water their way.
“We were just powerless against it,” said Prince.
He and the few people who were helping him have since run out of sand and sand bags.
The Fort St. James fire department has said they will come and help him Friday, and so far, the water isn’t in his house.
He has a sump pump working nonstop to keep the water out of his crawl space, and so far, it’s effective.
A member of the Nakazdli band, Prince said he requested the band’s help, but he says he hasn’t heard from them since he called them on Monday.
Aileen Prince band manager, said the band has been supplying Prince with sand to make sand bags and funds for travelling back and forth to move volunteers.
The band has also put up signs asking for volunteers to help Harold Prince, but Aileen Prince was unaware of how many people had responded to the signs.
One truck was stuck in the driveway when The Courier visited his property, and the driveway was flooded out and impassible to all but large 4x4 trucks.
There were a half dozen people there who Harold Prince said had been helping, but were out of sand and bags for the time being.
Prince said he deals with flooding every year, and hopes to get help from the band to put in a bit of a burm to keep the water out in future years.