‘I’ve never seen anything like it’: Flash flooding pummels Weyburn area

People in Weyburn found themselves assessing the damage Tuesday after the city was hit with flash flooding.

Driving into the city, fields looked more like lakes, streets looked like roaring rivers and backyards looked more like swimming pools.

Environment Canada said the area saw well over 80 millimetres, or around 3 1/2 inches, of rain by Tuesday afternoon.

Many people’s rain gauges are telling a different story.

Rod Bernard lives on the west side of the community. He says they got hit particularly bad.

“My rain gauge showed 5.2 inches. It was so much rain,” he said as he looked in disbelief at the water flowing down his street. “It’s unreal, and I’m not sure what happened because the lower part of the city didn’t seem to be as flooded as bad as this.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Liane Schrader spent some time around the hospital on Tuesday afternoon taking pictures to send to friends and family.

“The rain was coming down so hard and so fast that nothing could keep up. The drains and the eavestroughs, nothing could keep up,” she said. “This is definitely bad.”

Schrader says she has spent the last 40 years in Weyburn and this is the worst flooding she has seen, with the only comparable experience being in 2011.

Weyburn Mayor Marcel Roy spoke with 980 CJME about the situation on Tuesday morning.

“In my rain gauge, I had a little over four inches,” Roy said. “A few blocks to the west, they had over five inches of rain. So, there are certain areas that are most certainly having problems.”

Roy says the city was encouraging people to cut back on their water use to make it easier on the sewers.

“One of the big problems we’ve had is that since the flood we had in 2011, people put in sump pumps and then they started pumping into the sewer instead of pumping into their lawns. So that has just added to the overwhelming of the whole sewer system,” Roy explained.

“So now we’re telling people your sump pumps should be shot out onto the lawn.”

One woman said she was dealing with thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damages to her backyard and basement.

She said she didn’t want to think about how long it would take to get her property fixed.

Russell Marka is another person who looked on in disbelief Tuesday.

He says he slept through the storm, but woke up to a disaster.

“Every second house is so, so bad,” he said. “Our drain lines were completely plugged.

“This blew 2011 out of the water for us.”

Weyburn wasn’t the only community dealing with extensive flooding. People in Saskatoon have been in cleanup mode as well.