St. Lazare flood victims waiting for help

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This article was published 26/01/2012 (5386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. LAZARE — Fabien Leclair has spent the coldest nights of this winter sleeping in his car, a few feet away from an unlivable five-bedroom home with a massive south-facing sunroom in the Qu’Appelle Valley just outside St. Lazare.

Leclair has been told he can’t be in the mould-infested home for health reasons, so he’s living in a small, unheated trailer in the yard.

Small, portable heaters don’t do much for the tiny trailer once the temperature dips too low, however, and that’s when Leclair spends the night in his car.

The Manitoba government has told Leclair that his home — where water still sits in the basement, and together with mould has turned the basement into a mucky mess — is uninhabitable.

And while the house is a writeoff, government officials tell Leclair that the program intended to help flood victims doesn’t apply to him because his house had a “pre-existing condition” because of the way it was built 45 years ago.

Leclair says the house hasn’t had water in the basement for 45 years, however.

He was living in a local motel, paid for with flood assistance, until the funding was cut off Oct. 31.

“They said that’s it,” Leclair said. “They tell me they spent more than the value of my house on my mom, my sister and me already, so I was out in the cold.”

Other St. Lazare flood victims tell stories of officials coming more than once to collect the same information, and then saying they have lost the files.

They say one official told them something would be covered, only to have another official suggest it won’t.

One homeowner has been told there’s a cheque sitting on a desk in Winnipeg, and the local MLA has called various officials trying to track it down.

A handful of homes outside the protective dike that protects the village of St. Lazare itself are still empty — except for mud, mould and memories — and the homeowners have yet to be compensated for the losses.

Area MLA Leanne Rowat (Riding Mountain, PC) believes the problem might be that unprepared officials were sent out to meet with homeowners with no guidelines to go by in an effort to make it look like something was being done before Manitoba’s provincial election; or that officials are stalling for time, since the province budgeted $400 million to deal with flooding, and the price tag looks like it will be closer to $1 billion.

“I know that a number of families in this area have been trying to work with EMO and the province to try to get some answers to your claims,” Rowat told local flood victims at a recent meeting in St. Lazare.

“I know that some have been paid out in some fashion. Some have considered appeal, some are waiting for some answers.”

Rowat says the government sent unprepared officials to meet with flood victims.

“From my understanding, people were told, ‘go out and meet with the people who were affected,’ but were really not given a tool kit to deal with the situation at hand. They gathered information, but whether they were gathering information that was relevant to what was required, that’s my concern. I don’t think people were given a checklist of what they should be looking at. They were just sent out.

“I think it’s because it was just before the election There was a bit of a panic. The idea was to get people out there show that they’re interested, but I don’t know if they really knew what they were doing.”

Whatever the reason, St. Lazare flood victims are still waiting for compensation.

Fabien Leclair lived in a home west of St. Lazare with his mother and sister until an evacuation notice arrived May 1. The women went to Birtle.

“We all lived together in this house. My mom lived here for 45 years. She raised her family here, had foster kids here, had renters here. It was dry for 45 years, until the flood came,” he said. “The water from across the road seeped underneath the road to our house. The pressure from the water pushed the basement floor up and the water came in.”

While the flood water inundated the basement by several feet — and still sits in the basement — Leclair says Manitoba’s Emergency Measures Organization refused to look at his case until he hired an engineering firm to study how the basement was constructed 45 years ago.

“EMO would not look at my house unless I paid for an engineer’s report, so I had to pay $1,900 for the report,” he said.

“The report said there was flood damage, but the basement was built of railroad tie. There is concrete on both sides of the railway ties, but EMO says that’s a pre-existing condition and we’re not compensatable. “They say the lodging for my mother, sister and myself is higher than the value of the house, based on the tax assessment.”

Leclair said he was told that EMO would cover lodging costs for his family while they were out of the house, but was not told that those costs would be deducted from any settlement for damage to the house. His mother passed away Dec. 8 and his sister is staying with relatives. He’s now living in a small trailer in the yard of his mould-infested home.

“On Oct. 31, the lady at the hotel comes to me and says ‘Fabien, they’re not paying your rent anymore.’ I can’t afford the rent, so I lived in my car for four or five days because there were hunters staying in the trailer. After the hunters left I moved into this little trailer.”

When the weather gets to 30 C, as it has recently, Leclair sleeps in his car because it’s easier to heat than the trailer.

“I can’t afford to heat the trailer. I live on a disability pension and my hydro bill is going to be $500 this month.”

He said the car is surprisingly comfortable with the help of a portable heater.

“I put the seat back,” he says. “It lays right back. You have to keep the window open. That little 1,500-watt heater makes it really hot.”

While the family home is infested with mould, Leclair spends some time inside every day, keeping a fire going so the pipes don’t freeze.

“I go in there to keep the fire going. I try not to stay in the house for long. Health Canada looked at it and said ‘Here’s a mask, don’t go in the house very often.’”

He said EMO officials have suggested he cancel his original claim and appeal it, but he’s not sure where that would leave him.

Leclair is unsure of what to do, and is also upset with the way his claim has been treated.

“My mom and dad paid taxes all those years. I paid taxes for 35 or 40 years and can’t get any help, but politicians are riding around in a jet going to NHL games and staying in $3,000 a night hotel rooms. We keep the system going, and we’re the ones getting shafted.”

He said he’s losing hope that Manitoba’s government will help him out.

“I’ve lost all hope,” he said. “My last resort was getting ahold of the MLA and the (Moosomin World) Spectator. Maybe now we’ll get some help here.”

Farmer Angelo Fouillard counts himself lucky. The flood damaged his land — some of it covered with up to three feet of silt — but his house was spared.

“My No. 1 concern is these guys who don’t have a home,” he said. “It’s my livelihood, but at least I still have my home.”

Fouillard said he also has been frustrated by his dealings with EMO.

“I gave them all the information once, then a couple of weeks ago, they came out again. They said they lost the file, but here’s all the pictures, it’s in his file, he’s got them with him. I’m not sure where we’re sitting in the farming community. I’ve had two guys come out already.”

Terry Haney, head of the local group of the Manitoba Métis Federation, said he is upset to hear that some cabin owners near Winnipeg have been compensated for their losses, while some people in St. Lazare are out of a home and not getting any help.

“The priority should be the people like here out of their homes, out of everything, not the cabins and part-time homes,” Haney said.

Rowat hopes to get the message through to the government in Winnipeg, and says her concern is for the people who are out of their homes, and have nowhere to go.

“We need the government to take some ownership and take some leadership and make some decisions. I want to make sure that, at the level of the government, they know what’s going on. I want to make sure the minister knows, the premier knows.”

Steve Ashton, the minister responsible for the response to the flood, could not be reached for comment.

» Courtesy the Moosomin World Spectator