It has now been 25 years since the Flood of the Century ravaged the Red River Valley.
Herm Martens was Reeve for the Rural Municipality of Morris in 1997. He says similar to now, that winter had a lot of snow. And the melt had already started when one weekend southern Manitoba got walloped with a doozy of a snowstorm, removing any doubt that flooding was imminent. Nearly 50 centimetres of snow fell during that early April blizzard in what today is commonly referred to as the Storm of the Century.
"That was three days of storm," he recalls. "And I know there were people that had to climb out windows to open and shovel away the snow from their door so they could get out."
Back in 1997, residents of the Red River Valley would often refer to the floods of 1950 or 1979 when making projections. Prior to 1997, the 1979 flood produced the highest water levels at Morris that most residents had experienced in their lifetime. In fact, Martens says most homes in the Red River Valley were flood proofed to be able to withstand 1979 levels. Though Martens says some people were stubborn enough to believe they would never again witness a 1979-sized flood and refused to build up their properties.
As the melt continued that spring, Martens says they started to see images and video from Fargo and Grand Forks. He says on the one hand, these images helped convince some of the naysayers that flooding would happen. However, at the same time, it gave residents living along the Red River in southern Manitoba an idea of what was to come.
"And it was bad," says Martens.
As the waters rose, flood officials began to encourage residents to leave their homes for higher ground. Martens says in the RM of Morris they mandated that anyone under the care of a doctor should leave. They also asked anyone under the age of 16 or over the age of 65 to leave, unless they had made arrangements. For those who still qualified to stay in their homes, Martens says the municipality required they have a cell phone, water and food as well as a boat that was longer than 14 feet and more than 40 horsepower. That is because the Red River had literally turned into a giant lake, with the RM utilizing a harbourmaster to decide each day whether the water was safe for boat travel.
But, Martens says even though the RM of Morris seemed to have a list of rules that made sense, the upper government asked that a mandatory evacuation take place. Martens would be asked to sign that document and he says this was a decision he wrestled with.
"I spent a lot of time talking to my good Lord and asked, 'give me guidance,'" he recalls.
"My people wanted to stay and I said I'm not going to sign," says Martens.
Further to that, Martens says evacuating Lowe Farm and Sperling would have made zero sense, as those two communities are much higher in elevation.
"We knew enough about the layout of the land that Winnipeg would have to move out before Sperling and Lowe Farm would have to," explains Martens.
For 44 days, Martens never left his flood office before midnight and was always back before 6 am. And, while Martens was busy making decisions for his ratepayers, he also had his own farm that faced the threat of flooding. At the time, his farm consisted of about 12,000 laying hens and a 200 sow weanling operation. Martens says his son-in-law was hired to handle the affairs of the farm that spring, with a very specific procedure for how to humanely get rid of the animals should the floodwaters overtake his barns.
In the end, not one of his animals died from the flooding that spring. Martens says that was a sharp contrast from the 1979 flood when they lost about 90 per cent of their revenue for the year with the livestock production because they had to sell at wholesale price just to get rid of them.
By April 27, the river crested at Emerson. Two days later, 3,000 military personnel were deployed to Manitoba and then about one week later the river crested in Winnipeg. Once the water receded, then came the cleanup. Martens says they had at least 30 excavators cleaning up the debris left in ditches in order that the farmers could put seed in the ground that spring.
Looking back on that spring now 25 years later, Martens says there is not one thing he would do differently, if given the opportunity. He notes one of the good decisions they made that spring was ensuring that almost all of the grain was out of the Red River Valley by the time the floodwaters arrived.
According to Martens, one thing that was born as a result of the 1997 flood, was the Red River Coalition, made up of 13 municipalities. Another group that was created was the Red River Basin Commission. This commission had representatives from two countries, including three states and one province. Martens says as a team this commission worked to flood proof the entire Red River Valley to the best of its ability, on both sides of the border.
Martens says those 44 days in the spring of 1997 were not enough to scare him out of office. And in fact, it would not be the last major flood he would fight as Reeve. And even though those events created considerable emotional stress on many, the flood proofing that happened around homes and communities in the following months and years, helped prepare them for future flood events.
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