Heavy machinery brings hope to heavy cleanups across western Newfoundland

After days of flooding, Jakeman All Grade School in Trout River nearly slid into the river Tuesday.

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Christina Simmonds's son, who is in Grade 11 at the school in Gros Morne National Park, noticed Tuesday morning that chunks of the land behind the school were being washed into the widening river.

"In the matter of an hour, you [could] see it going by feet," she said.

By Tuesday evening, officials from the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District enlisted excavators and dump trucks to lay down loads of stone and divert water away from the school.

The school was saved, for now. A release sent by the school district said it'll continue to monitor the situation and that a full assessment by engineers would be conducted.

"It looks like we were lucky on this one," Trout River Mayor Horace Crocker said in a Facebook post after returning from the school.

It was another harrowing day for residents of Trout River, who were hit hard by the flooding that washed out roads and damaged homes across western Newfoundland in the past three days.

But repairs are underway in the region and hopes are going up.

Even Marble Mountain announced it'd be opening Thursday morning, after battling major floods.

Simmonds and her family were evacuated Saturday and returned home Monday.

There's no damage to their home, but there's a small landslide in front her house where the lawn washed out.

"We had this freeze, so now we don't know if there's still water in this ground and if it is frozen now, when it thaws, is it going to keep going?" she said.

Simmonds said there is a lot of damage in the town, but that everyone is trying to help each other and figure out how to fix it all.

Excavators are very convincing

There's hope along Route 450 on the south side of the Bay of Islands, as trucks and heavy machinery were finally able to access a part of the road that had been completely washed out.

On Monday, the road was closed at John's Beach because of concerns the pavement would crack wide open.

Today, workers were able to get through and start the repair on a major washout. A section of the road was completely swept away by water from Rattler Brook, making it impossible for residents of towns like York Harbour and Lark Harbour to leave by car.

"[There's a] couple of locals running back and forth between York Harbour, Lark Harbour and Frenchman's Cove in personal longliners," said Derek Murphy, a foreman with Mike Kelly and Sons Ltd.

He was there digging out the crushed culverts and laying down new ones Tuesday afternoon.

"This is not the season to be doing pipe work," he said, noting that the rocks in the dump truck were freezing together.

"Dump goes up and it doesn't come out. So then you have to use an excavator to convince it it's gotta come out."

By sea and by air

Coast Guard auxiliary members transported essentials like milk, bread, eggs and even furnace fuel to people stuck in Lark Harbour Tuesday morning, said Melanie Joyce, the town's mayor.

There are also regular helicopters going in and out of the towns, transporting medication, dialysis patients and other people with medical appointments.

"It's amazing to see how the towns have pulled together," Joyce said.

'This has cut our whole farm in half'

David Simmons is also hoping the emergency repairs go quickly and smoothly. The faster all those excavators and dump trucks are freed up from fixing the highways, the faster they can be used to fix the massive washout in the road leading to his Little Rapids farm.

On Saturday morning, a huge gush of water, mud and debris took out the road leading up to Hammond Farms, which he owns and runs.

The result is a hole he estimates to be 10 metres deep, and an impassable road.

"Essentially, this has cut our whole farm in half," he said.

Though there may be money from the government to help him with the repairs — the damage happened because a highway culvert collapsed, he said — Simmons is worried how a late start to the repairs could affect his growing season.

If repairs are pushed to the spring, he said he'll lose a week's worth of work on the farm.