Business owners scramble to stay afloat in Minnedosa

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This article was published 17/05/2022 (1640 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MINNEDOSA — Krista Powell and Lisa Buchanan woke up Tuesday morning knowing time was not on their side in a race to save all of their merchandise from a potential flooding disaster.

The Minnedosa entrepreneurs and co-owners of Gold Leaf Boutique quickly got to work, boxing up everything they owned into five vehicles in a matter of hours.

After overcoming difficult business restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and officially opening in February, overland flooding from the Little Saskatchewan River along Minnedosa’s Main Street has brought on the next series of challenges for the duo. The uncertainty of water damage to their storefront and the interior now remains in question.

“We have been closed since Thursday, so we have no income coming in,” Powell said. “It’s terrifying, because there is nothing we can do.”

“If you talked to me early this morning, you probably would’ve got gushing tears and a slobbering mess, but I actually feel confident that we’re going to be OK now,” Buchanan said. “Our stuff is going to go into my parents’ shop where it’s warm and dry, and we’re going to have a really good sleep tonight.”

The past few days have blurred together since the Town of Minnedosa warned residents of potentially severe overland flooding, Powell said. A few weeks ago, they started to lift merchandise off the floor in preparation for the worst.

On Saturday, Powell was one of many volunteers starting to work on the first and second line of sandbags. On Sunday night, she was alarmed to see the town notifying residents that the province would need to remove logs from the Minnedosa dam to release pressure.

A weather system that is anticipated to dump as much as 80 millimetres of rain throughout southern Manitoba this week prompted the town to declare a local state of emergency Tuesday morning. Community members prepared and placed another 30,000 sandbags in an attempt to mitigate damage that has already been caused by the flood.

Powell said it has been difficult to keep up with the rising water.

“We were behind the store and it literally felt that we did one load of sandbags, I took my truck, got another load of sandbags and the water was already rising. You couldn’t tell we put a whole layer on.”

Buchanan said they had listened to previous concerning stories of businesses affected by flooding, more recently in 2020, and decided to act fast to save their fledgling boutique, which sells a plethora of made-in-Manitoba clothing, apparel, food and pet treats.

“Our heart and soul is in here, [we couldn’t] have it all soggy and wet the next day when you wake up,” Buchanan said.

“We are not going to fret about what the river is going to do.”

Powell said there have been many sleepless nights checking on the storefront camera and monitoring the storm drain in front on their main street.

They watched workers from the town place plastic and sandbags down and water kept seeping through the drain. They attempted to place a black fabric and gravel over top but the water proceeded to run over the sidewalk, creeping closer to the front door.

“It’s amazing to see the strength of water and what it can do,” Powell said.

“There’s so much weight on that storm drain and the water is still coming up — there’s sandbags, gravel, and it’s nuts.”

Travelling down Minnedosa’s Main Street, the town was eerily quiet Tuesday afternoon as many businesses shut their doors, and sandbagging stretched southward from the Little Saskatchewan River all the way to Second Avenue Southeast.

Buchanan said vehicles passing through to observe the daunting conditions were only making things worse by pushing the water in waves down the street.

Walking across the bridge over to Armitage Avenue, where parents would normally pick-up their children from Minnedosa Collegiate and Tanner’s Crossing School, what once was a road has now become an arm of the river.

Minnedosa resident John Mendrikis spent the afternoon monitoring the water levels next door to Gold Leaf Boutique and levels across Main Street. After watching the town swiftly come together over the weekend, he is hopeful their sandbagging efforts will hold back the river a while longer.

“It’s nice to know the community gets together to be able to do everything that is possible against a flood like this.”

» jbernacki@brandonsun.com

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