People in Weyburn continue to lend a hand to one another after the city experienced flooding from severe rainfall over the Labour Day weekend. “We had we had a pretty significant rain event on Monday morning. Environment Canada officially [reporting] 84mm of rain in a couple of hours, but we certainly have reports of much more than that in areas around the city,” Weyburn Mayor Jeff Richards told CTV News Tuesday morning. “Some folks reporting six inches in the rain gauges. That is just entirely too much [in that] short of time.” With a series of severe thunderstorms beginning Sunday night carrying over to Monday morning, Richards said he is thankful city workers and volunteers stepped in to help. “It was holiday on Monday and folks left their families, they came to work to help out police, fire and EMS workers,” said Richards. “They made sure the traffic was directed and the people were safe and that’s important. That helps the community get behind one another.” Rose McInnis, owner of Blue Earth Environmental, said all three of her stores locations took a hit. “Our products were getting drenched, wet, it was quite a huge area,” McInnis said, telling CTV News she witnessed water pouring from the ceiling of her store. “We just tried to quickly triage, tried to get the good stuff out of the way.” After spending hours cleaning up and trying to save as much merchandise as possible, McInnis said she was still at a loss. “It really almost killed me yesterday to throw out items, but there was just no way to salvage it,” she said. “If there’s a way to salvage it, I was doing it yesterday.” She was not the only business impacted. Gale Regines, who owns Meok Ja Milk Bar, spent the tail-end of Labour Day weekend draining water from establishment. According to Environment and Climate Change, the area received more than 70mm of rain in 36 hours. “Right now we’re still looking through what needs to be done, but looking at it now, it’s just the floors,” Regines said on Tuesday. “But, we don’t know yet because we haven’t been to the back area of our business yet.” The City of Weyburn said it plans to apply to the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program (PDAP) for financial support. From there the city will inform residents on how they can receive further assistance.
