State of emergency in St. Clements



The Rural Municipality of St. Clements in Manitoba declared a local state of emergency Thursday after flooding damaged as many as 45 Patricia Beach cottages.

'It looks like I'm on an island.' —Bob Hyshka

Winds gusting up to 90 km/h whipped water from Lake Winnipeg around the shoreline community about 70 kilometers northeast of Winnipeg.

Local resident Bob Hyshka said local crews are trying to get pumps in place to move some of the water away from the cottages. Many of them are currently shut for the winter season, he said.

"Lot of them are shut down for the winter, and they can't leave them shut down like this for the winter 'cause they're flooded," he said.

Even Hyshka, whose own year-round cottage is about a kilometre from the lakefront, wasn't spared damaged, he said.

"Right now I'm standing in the sunroom of my house and it looks like I'm on an island," he said.

"Lake Winnipeg came up yesterday over the road in front of the house and flooded the subdivision and flooded all the subdivision in back here."