One year after flood and still fighting

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Garry Grubert is raising his Twin Lakes Beach home two metres to comply with new provincial rules.

TWIN LAKES BEACH -- Garry Grubert has a new pad.

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A home at Twin Lakes Beach remains damaged after last year’s flooding. ( BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

Poured over the last few days, Grubert's huge new cement foundation will be the base of his two-storey house, which sits empty on several steel beams and wood cribs.

Sometime over the next few weeks, once the cement hardens, the retired gym teacher's house will be jacked up about two metres and gently slid over to the thick concrete pad.

It's the biggest step he and his wife, Lydia, will take in rebuilding their lives after last year's disastrous flooding on Lake Manitoba, and one he must take to meet the province's new flood-proofing requirements for the lake.

"I love this place," Grubert said. "This is my dream house. I worked all my life for it."

It was a year ago Wednesday when the Gruberts and hundreds of other Manitobans who live and work around Lake Manitoba saw their lives dramatically altered after high winds whipped up a ferocious storm on the flooded lake.

Hundreds of homes, cottages and farms, not to mention an entire First Nation community on nearby Lake St. Martin, were destroyed.

"People don't realize how bad it was," Grubert, 69, said Wednesday. "It's a shame, because this beach was beautiful."

For Grubert and others in the flood zone, they've adopted the unofficial sentiment: Never give an inch. Never give an inch in their desire to rebuild and reclaim what they had and never give an inch in their talks with the Selinger government in getting what they think they deserve in compensation.

"The point of departure for us is the lack of ownership for this, the taking of responsibility for this," said Jack King, president of the Twin Lakes Beach Association, of the Selinger government's refusal to say its deliberate use of the Assiniboine Diversion last year caused the widespread flooding. "The first thing to correct a mistake is admit you have a problem."

That feeling is repeated around the lake. Virtually no one disagrees use of the diversion spared Portage la Prairie and other communities east of it along the Assiniboine River -- even parts of Winnipeg -- from destructive flooding; they just want the province to pony up in fixing the damage that decision caused.

"It's been a year already," Langruth-area resident Darrel Armstrong said. "They should have had all their ducks in row long before now, but they don't do diddly-squat."

Like Grubert, Armstrong wants to return to what he and his wife, Dee Dee, had before the water came, but they and others say the province's various flood-compensation programs are mired in unfair restrictions and needless delays.

Some, like the many who face a second year away from their cottages, are talking about a class-action lawsuit against the province to get what they say is due to them. Under the province's rules, they'll see less compensation than permanent residents, yet the cost for them to rebuild is almost equal to that of a permanent resident given today's newer building codes and the cost of raising the structure to new flood-proofing building standards. Flood victims meet June 6 at Sisler High School to discuss what to do on that front.

At the same time, they're demanding some face time with the premier to tell him some of his government's flood-compensation policies don't help anyone, especially people like the Armstrongs who've lost their livelihoods as their land is years away from being used to graze cattle, seed or even grow hay.

"This used to be a very profitable place," Armstrong said. "All we want is what we had -- not what we could get."

Armstrong, 64, said he and his wife fear they may be cut off compensation to replace lost income, a loss compounded by the severe flooding of Big Point Resort where they had hoped to develop more cottage lots for their retirement.

"The water was so high it tore the beach away," Armstrong said. "It moved it into my hayfield."

They also need more help in the cleanup, all around the lake. The big risk now is fire and how it could quickly spread through the kilometres of dead trees and, in some places, still abandoned cottages.

Delta Beach resident Don Clarkson, of the Association of Lake Manitoba Stakeholders, said one a quick way of cleaning up the lake and its shoreline is calling in the army again. "They should be our green team," he said. "They're close by at Shilo. They've helped us before. They'd make quick job of it."

What the Gruberts, Armstrongs, Clarksons, Kings and so many others also want is for Lake Manitoba to be lowered even more and kept low so its ravaged shoreline has a chance to repair itself and the sand beaches can come back. That means building a new channel out of the lake so that in flood years, what comes in through the diversion and other sources is also drained -- that the lake is not again used as a holding pond.

"Until there's a more comprehensive, articulated plan to manage the lake, people won't have confidence," King said. "When you look out over the lake, it's peaceful today, but you also ask yourself, what does the future hold?"

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

The Free Press has covered the Lake Manitoba flood situation extensively over the last year. Watch some of our archive videos below: