The one with the State of Emergency
So for those of you who don't follow me on Twitter or Facebook, this will be the first you're hearing of this (potentially). For the past week, much of Northern Ontario & Northern Minnesota has received a record amount of rainfall. When we were driving back from Minneapolis on Thursday night, many of the ditches/culverts along Highway 61 (from Duluth to Grand Portage, MN and even back into Canada) were close to cresting, and spilling onto the highway. In two cases, they had already began to, and in a third case, part of the highway had already been washed away, forcing ALL traffic up onto old Highway 61, north of Grand Marais.
There was some rather nasty weather again last night, and we received an astounding 78mil of rain (Specifically between 12am and 7am). The radio was talking about flooding within the city, and I honestly thought nothing of it until I was at work, and the city began to slowly shut down. Businesses closed, schools closed... We couldn't figure out why we had such a high traffic rate today (On a Monday of all days) until about 9:30 when the DJ on our local radio station announced it.
'The City of Thunder Bay is declaring a State of Emergency.'
Many of the rivers within the city have gone up as much as three feet since 5am this morning, and are showing no signs of slowing. Spillways have been opened, and the dams are open as much as they can be to prevent further flooding, however it's almost like the water is unstoppable. One of the floodways is about an hour from cresting, and there's quite literally nothing the city can do about it. This wasn't exactly preventable, and we didn't predict this would happen... One of the small communities (Kakabeka Falls) is currently landlocked. All access points to the small community are via bridges over the rivers (The Neebing River & Kaministiqua River), and the roads have been washed away. There's heavy damage to many other roads within city limits, and there's a threat of more rain tonight.
Many of these people have lost everything. I consider myself lucky, because I live in an area of town where the flooding was minimal. We're going to have extensive water damage to our rental unit, but compared to others, we've lucked out. Some people had upwards of 5 feet of water in their basements. Everything is gone.
I don't know what exactly can be done for these people who've lost everything. I'm just at a loss for words at how terrible this all is. Some people will never be able to replace what they've lost (photo's, memories, etc), and some will never recover from the financial burden they're about to incur to replace everything...
There was some rather nasty weather again last night, and we received an astounding 78mil of rain (Specifically between 12am and 7am). The radio was talking about flooding within the city, and I honestly thought nothing of it until I was at work, and the city began to slowly shut down. Businesses closed, schools closed... We couldn't figure out why we had such a high traffic rate today (On a Monday of all days) until about 9:30 when the DJ on our local radio station announced it.
'The City of Thunder Bay is declaring a State of Emergency.'
Many of the rivers within the city have gone up as much as three feet since 5am this morning, and are showing no signs of slowing. Spillways have been opened, and the dams are open as much as they can be to prevent further flooding, however it's almost like the water is unstoppable. One of the floodways is about an hour from cresting, and there's quite literally nothing the city can do about it. This wasn't exactly preventable, and we didn't predict this would happen... One of the small communities (Kakabeka Falls) is currently landlocked. All access points to the small community are via bridges over the rivers (The Neebing River & Kaministiqua River), and the roads have been washed away. There's heavy damage to many other roads within city limits, and there's a threat of more rain tonight.
Many of these people have lost everything. I consider myself lucky, because I live in an area of town where the flooding was minimal. We're going to have extensive water damage to our rental unit, but compared to others, we've lucked out. Some people had upwards of 5 feet of water in their basements. Everything is gone.
I don't know what exactly can be done for these people who've lost everything. I'm just at a loss for words at how terrible this all is. Some people will never be able to replace what they've lost (photo's, memories, etc), and some will never recover from the financial burden they're about to incur to replace everything...