Church volunteers eagerly fight floodwaters
SELKIRK, MB—Virginia Coleman had finished preparing her Easter message and was sound asleep at 2:30 a.m. when firefighters knocked on the door of her house on Peltz Drive just north of Selkirk. They told her she'd have to evacuate—the Red River was rising.
After reporting to the RM office, Coleman spent the rest of the night watching her two dogs and drinking coffee in a hall in Selkirk. When morning came, she left her pets with the local veterinarian and led two Easter services at the church she pastors—Little Britain United Church.
"I don't think I was thinking much at all," says Coleman. "I know I was there, but I didn't feel focused."
Coleman returned to her house later that afternoon to find "dining room table sized" ice chunks deposited in the empty lot next door to her house. Thankfully, her home escaped unscathed.
Some of Coleman's neighbours weren't so fortunate. Many houses suffered damage from water or giant slabs of river-borne ice.
Though no one from her congregation was flooded out, says Coleman, the church was out in force helping their neighbours build barriers against rising floodwaters. A week before Palm Sunday everyone brought a loaf of bread to church and after a shortened service made hundreds of sandwiches for sandbaggers.
"People were so willing to help," says Coleman.
Niell Stitt, pastor of Rivers Edge Church in Selkirk, helped drain his neighbours' yards with his portable pump and rallied a team of volunteers from his congregation to sandbag wherever help was needed.
Stitt's congregation has been worshipping in the Selkirk Friendship Centre for several weeks; their usual place of worship, the Gordon Howard Seniors Centre, is surrounded by a dike.
The water diverted around Winnipeg by the floodway reenters the Red River just south of Selkirk. "This year the whole river north of Selkirk was still frozen," says Stitt. "When you dump all that water, it's got to go somewhere, and that's what caused the flooding."
Kitchens on wheels
Two Salvation Army kitchens on wheels have been cranking out hot meals for hungry armies of sandbaggers in Winnipeg and municipalities north of the city since emergency efforts began in March. The two delivery vans suped up with microwaves, sinks, refrigerators and freezers go wherever the City of Winnipeg coordinates a sandbagging bee. The mobile food factories staffed by volunteers have been cooking up soup, chili, coffee and hot chocolate for between 300 and 1,500 volunteers a day, says Salvation Army spokesperson, Les Marshall.
The newest of the two vehicles is a $185,000 canteen truck donated by Fed Ex for the Salvation Army to use in emergencies like this one.
The Salvation Army is also standing by with a reception centre capable of housing thousands of people, should the need arise.
City of refuge
South of Winnipeg, Gavin van der Linde, pastor of The Open Door church has been coordinating sandbagging in the Morris area for weeks. "We've got lots of volunteers," says the official emergency coordinator for Morris. Homes outside the earthen ring dike that surround the town of Morris have been flooded, but inside they're feeling quite safe, if a touch bored says van der Linde.
All but one entrance to the fortified town have been filled in, and business has slowed to a trickle.
Two of his children's classmates from outside communities are staying with the van der Linde family so they can keep going to school, he says. It takes about an hour to drive around to St. Jean Baptiste, 10 kilometres south of Morris.
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