The Town of Neepawa Council voted unanimously to seek financial disaster relief during an emergency meeting last week.

The move follows nearly a month of widespread rain, and heavy, isolated thunderstorms, which pummelled some areas with record rainfall.

Environment Canada’s John McIntyre told The Neepawa Press last week that while the rainfall has been widespread, isolated pockets suffered much more. In fact, at a number of Environment Canada weather stations, no precipitation from these roaming thunderstorms hit any of their recording stations.

"That's the thing with thunderstorms, they are hit and miss. There was so much rain to begin with earlier in the month and in May, the ground was so saturated, the ground couldn't take much more," McIntyre said last week.

Although Neepawa has not been hit as hard as surrounding rural municipalities, such as Rosedale and Lansdowne, Neepawa's CAO, Allison Bardsley said the application for Disaster Financial Assistance (DFA) to the Manitoba Emergency Measures Organization is necessary due to the anticipated number of overland flooding situations.
"Once water begins to go down, we may have more reports.. as damage is accessible," Bardsley said.
The funding from the DFA will allow more claims under the application, but it is up to the province to determine who is eligible for assistance.

"How quickly we will hear a response on the application depends on the workload they are handling, there is no time frame," Bardsley said.

"I want residents to know that this is only for overland flooding, sewer back-up and such is not eligible under this application.
In rural areas, the RM of Lansdowne is still assessing water damage after the disastrous rain which hasn’t seemed to stop.

Tracy Winthrop-Meyers, CAO of Lansdowne said that over the weekend they still received anywhere from three-quarters to an inch-and-a-half of rain.
“We are hardly able to keep up. This continuous rain is affecting the south side of the municipality. Right now we are still assessing the original damage due to flooding and excess water,” Winthrop-Meyers said.

Roads are washed out and although the RM is working on fixing the damage, it seems to keep piling up.
The municipality has filed for Disaster Financial Assistance (DFA) and is in the process of identifying where all the problem areas are.

“DFA is like any other insurance, we have to list and document, take pictures of all the damage. A inspector will come and determine what the costs are of repairs after completing his report on what is claimable and what isn’t. Its quite a process,” Winthrop-Meyers said.

Ed Levandoski, Reeve of the RM of Rosedale said the story is much the same for their municipality.
"We've had more rain which has slowed down the progress of us working on fixing damage, but the rain didn't create any more problems which is good," Levandoski said.
The original estimate of damage has decreased due to too many variables Levandoski said, but he was pleased that some of the culverts are salvageable.
"We're are going to need a lot of fill to fix roads and such, but the fact that we can fix some of the culverts is great and it will be less than expected. But the creeks are running swiftly still, making our attempt to fix everything move slowly," Levandoski said.
“But we have made progress.”