A Manitoba community is filling sandbags to help homes and businesses after it experienced “significant” flooding from a rainstorm on Monday morning.
The Town of Swan River in western Manitoba said in a post late Monday it was asking for volunteers to help.
Swan River’s industrial park and the south end of town are among the areas the town is focusing on for sandbags. The town said in a post the south end saw significant flooding from east of the community.
Rick Wowchuck, the MLA for Swan River, said in a Facebook post late Monday that volunteers, RCMP, conservation officers and firefighters are also sandbagging homes and setting up pumps in the town’s southwest corner. He said it’s due to rising waters from the Roaring River “finding its way down any drainage system across land.”
While Swan River is dealing with flooding from the storm, other communities in western Manitoba are without power from Saturday and Sunday storms.
Manitoba Hydro said Monday night that Minitonas, Virden and Russell are still affected.
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“Good progress today but damage to our infrastructure is severe and some areas like Minitonas are impossible or unsafe to access,” the Crown corporation said in a post on X.
The corporation said Virden would have 20 customers remain without power overnight, with 16 in Russell and more than 400 in Minitonas.
Minitonas declared a state of local emergency after the heavy rain, and issued a boil water advisory after a loss of water pressure in its distribution system.
Damage includes multiple spans of lines and poles down in more than 100 individual outages across parts of southwest Manitoba and the Parkland area, the corporation added. At its height, approximately 4,000 people were without power Monday morning.
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