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Widespread flooding in Saskatchewan is washing out roads and threatening homes as the snow melts.
Parts of northwest Saskatchewan are cut off due to flooding, including English River First Nation, where the only road into the community is covered by water.
Central Saskatchewan also has numerous areas of flooding. Highway 5 between Wadena and Canora is closed, as water has covered the road, and many other roads in the area have portions that are closed because they’re impassable.
Caitlyn Villeneuve farms in the Quill Lake area, about 150 kilometres east of Saskatoon.
“At first, I was quite shocked because when I heard that it was starting to flood, I actually didn’t quite believe it until I saw it,” she told Morning Edition host Adam Hunter on Monday.
“Then it was really surreal. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.'”
Some roads in the Tisdale and Melfort areas were affected by flooding on the weekend.
Melfort-area resident Shelley Vanderbyl said she left to go to church Sunday morning and noticed some water on the road, but when she was heading home it was a lot worse.
“But now when I’ve come back, it’s washed out quite a bit. … It doesn’t look too safe,” she told CBC on Sunday.
Spring flooding is washing out roads in many parts of Saskatchewan. Melfort resident Shelley Vanderbyl talks about the washed out roads in her area.
Up in the northwest, English River First Nation emergency management coordinator Candyce Paul said Highway 918, the only road into the community of Patuanak, closed on Friday after two days of water running over the road washed it out.
That left people trying to get home stranded, and cut the community off — again.
Last summer’s wildfire season caused road closures and evacuations, and is affecting the flooding.
“There’s no living trees and no root systems to hold this water back, so there’s a lot of water that is just flowing,” Paul said.
