Tears welled up as she slowly washed her hands in a puddle of muddy, brown water.
Her glasses were speckled with muddy fingerprints and flecks of drying brown water. Her blue jeans were only blue around her hips and a soaked black nylon jacket could only be called black for a lack of previous knowledge of the jacket’s colour.

As she looked up, the only truly clean spot on her visibly exhausted face were the tracks caused by tears.

“It’s gone,” she said simply as she vainly tried to dry her hands by wiping them back-and-forth on the soaked nylon jacket.
“It’s all gone.”

For nearly 40 straight hours the woman had battled rising flood waters around her home.

Her family, friends and volunteers had fought through the day and night, sandbagging and carrying valuables from the home to a waiting cube van parked 200 feet away on the top of a small hill. The cube van was making its fifth or sixth trip, but despite the hurried move, much of the lady’s possessions had been reduced to soggy, muddied ruin.

She stopped trying to dry her hands and turned to take a look at her once-beautiful cottage home. Potted plants still hung from the rafters on her now mudwater-covered cedar deck. Only the very top of well-trimmed hedges that surrounded a once-resplendent flower garden were visible despite a piled bank of sandbags in front.


Like the sandbags, her rubber boots could no longer stem the rising water.
She turned. Despite the heroic 40-hour battle they had waged, she knew it was over.
The water now freely flowed over the sandbags and through the hedges.
The river had won.

Dejectedly, she slogged her way up the hill to the waiting cube van. She opened the van’s front door, perched herself on the seat and dumped out her rubber boots before sliding in barefoot.

The van drove away. The rubber boots were all that was left at the top of the hill.
In 2007, the Bulkley River swelled and engulfed many homes in the Smithers area in what was called then a 100-year event. With offered government assistance, the lady did return to her home several weeks later and restored her beautiful country cottage on the outskirts of Smithers.

River floods happen. We don’t like it obviously, but it is understandable and compassionate volunteers and governments are always ready to help.
We all can remember the 1997 flood of the century around Winnipeg and the outflowing of compassion and financial support.
But what happens when it isn’t the obvious?

Rural communities surrounding Neepawa have been hit hard by rising water. For most, however, this type of flooding has no bearing on proximity to rivers or flood plains.

Already heavily-saturated ground has been inundated with record rainfall and many, particularly rural, homeowners, are suffering flooding in their homes.
In the past, governments are quick to offer assistance to those affected by river floods, the question is whether or not this different-style of flooding will be addressed.

Whether it is rising rivers or just rising groundwater, the effects are the same.
As are the tears.