State of emergency declared as spring melt leads to 'water everywhere' in southwestern Manitoba municipality

A flash flood led the southwestern Manitoba municipality of Boissevain-Morton to declare a state of emergency Wednesday, a municipal councillor says, as the spring snow melt sent a torrent of water gushing over frozen farm fields and washing out roads.

The municipality estimates that at least 70 per cent of roads in the southern part of Boissevain-Morton, which is south of Brandon, were unsafe for travel due to washouts and overland flooding, according to a Wednesday Facebook post.

"We went from [a] spring where we had no thaw at all to 18 degrees yesterday and boom … by last night we had water everywhere," said Judy Swanson, head of council for the municipality.

Declaring a state of emergency will help control travel to and from any affected area or road, said Swanson.

She said council made the decision at the outset of the flooding to keep the state of emergency in place for 30 days, because they couldn't know the extent of the damage and wanted locals to be aware that they should stay off unsafe roads.

Things escalated quickly. Everything was fine when a council meeting ended Tuesday morning, said Swanson, but by mid-afternoon "the water had let go."

The overland flooding came mostly from snow melt in the nearby Turtle Mountains area and wound its way to Boissevain-Morton, said Swanson.

"When that happens, it comes quite quickly and all of a sudden you get like flash floods, and that's what happened," she said. "It was such a force."

Once the water filled local creeks it flooded onto rural roadways, filling up ditches and farm fields. The ground remains frozen, so once snow began melting in the past week of warming conditions it had nowhere else to go but overland, said Swanson.

One resident had their basement fill up "in a flash," she said.

"She said, 'I have never seen anything like it,'" sad Swanson. "It's always upsetting, and certainly for the people whose homes have been damaged,"

About two-thirds of roads in the south of the municipality were closed by Tuesday night or had water on them. One or two had to be cut with heavy equipment to let the water run through, said Swanson.

Swanson said crews were out all night monitoring the roads for safety reasons. 

Municipal staff are monitoring the conditions and will continue to close roads as needed.

The municipality asked that residents observe all road closures and exercise caution when travelling on rural roads, as conditions are rapidly changing.

Residents are also asked to report any unsafe conditions on the municipality's website.

"There's still a lot of snow to come and so we're not sure how bad it's going to get," Swanson said. "For the time being it looks like the worst has passed us."