Volunteers from national humanitarian aid organization Team Rubicon, who are helping with flood prevention in Manitoba's Peguis First Nation.Team Rubicon/via The Canadian Press
One of the largest First Nations in Manitoba is preparing for flooding as water levels in nearby rivers rise, and residents have been told to be ready to evacuate on short notice.
The province said this week that the Fisher River, which runs along Peguis First Nation, will likely breach its banks in the coming days, which could force thousands of people from their homes.
Volunteers and contractors are laying sandbags and building clay dikes to try to protect the community and keep the water out.
In an interview, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said the province is working with Ottawa to plan for future flood prevention, but remains focused at the moment “on getting through the worries for this spring.”
“We’re keeping an eye on the forecast,” he said. “I mean, best-case scenario, we’re mounting a huge, huge effort to get these communities ready to prevent flooding, and then maybe the flood waters don’t materialize, or don’t materialize to the extent that is being predicted.”
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But Mr. Kinew warned that forecasts suggest flooding could rise to the level of 2014, when Manitoba and Saskatchewan experienced historic rainfall, causing one of the worst years for spring flooding on record.
The Fisher and the nearby Icelandic River basins are expected to peak between April 23 and 28, according to a provincial flood report. Peguis First Nation leaders said they are expecting 2014 flood levels, but the worst-case scenario could be as bad as 2022, when 1,000 people were forced to evacuate and more than 700 homes were destroyed.
The community, with a population of 10,246, is located about 180 kilometres north of Winnipeg, in Manitoba’s Interlake region.
Water levels on the Red River around Winnipeg are also rising, but officials are not expecting it to be of significant concern in the city.
Peguis First Nation has been preparing for flooding since last week and requested support from the federal government, the province and community volunteers.
Peguis First Nation is shown surrounded with Fisher River flood water north of Winnipeg, May 15, 2022. The community is highly susceptible to flooding, given its location along the Fisher River and the low-lying land on which the First Nation is builtJOHN WOODS/The Canadian Press
Ottawa tapped veteran-led humanitarian organization Team Rubicon to help, and since Sunday, 63 members of the group have been deployed.
“It’s been a real sense of community and certainly there’s a lot of teamwork going on,” said Tim Kenney, chief operations officer for Team Rubicon.
Mr. Kenney said the team is working eight-hour days and using 6,000 sandbags a house. Each sandbag weighs up to 20 kilograms, he said.
Peguis First Nation Chief Stan Bird said in an update on the community website earlier this week that they are working to protect up to 225 homes from flooding.
Besides the sandbags, volunteers are also using heavy machinery to build clay dikes and laying tiger tubes, which are prefabricated flexible pipes that can be used to build barriers.
Mr. Bird said homes are assessed individually by risk level. He said clay dikes are used to protect homes in high-risk areas, while sandbags and tiger tubes are used for medium- and low-risk houses.
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The chief and other members of Peguis First Nation Council were not available for an interview Wednesday.
Peguis First Nation has had 12 major floods since 2000, and has repeatedly declared states of emergency as a result. The community is highly susceptible to flooding, given its location along the Fisher River and the low-lying land on which the First Nation is built.
In 2024, the nation launched a $1-billion lawsuit against the federal and provincial governments, seeking damages from the 2022 flood.
The community alleged the governments were negligent in failing to provide permanent flood-prevention infrastructure for the First Nation.
In 2009, the province hired infrastructure consulting firm AECOM to do a study on permanent flood-prevention measures for the community. The report found the most economically viable option was a dike along the Fisher River corridor.
Peguis First Nation said last year that the government had delayed implementing AECOM’s model to look for other options, causing an “unnecessary and costly delay in developing meaningful solutions.”
During a trip to Ottawa this week, Mr. Kinew spoke with federal Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski and other officials about providing relief and future support to Peguis and Fisher River.
“Climate change is real,” he said Wednesday. “We’re past the era of predicting climate change. We’re now in the era of trying to mitigate and accommodate the impacts of global warming.”
With a report from Temur Durrani in Winnipeg