Minden Hills is holding off on sounding the victory horn after the battle with flooding.
Last week during the Committee of the Whole meeting, Mayor Brent Devolin gave an extended update to how the flooding event of 2019 has gone and is still going.
Devolin felt that this year’s “event” went smoothly based on the township being ahead of the curve on declaring the emergency, getting bags made, and overall preparedness. The long-time mayor offered perspective by saying that he had aged years during the 2017 flooding, and this year he only aged several months.
Although this event was concerning and potentially damaging to the residents, Devolin and the other councillors all took note of the work that volunteers had done to make and distribute sandbags. Devolin said that something close to 20,000 sandbags. Councillor Bob Carter commended the efforts of the community by saying that he had heard of groups of people that would cancel their plans to go bag sand.
As much as the emergency is in the past. the council agreed that the flooding event goes on much after that. Whether that be clean up, continued concerns over washed out roads etc. In previous years, the recovery operations went on for months, and that might be the case here.
Devolin pointed out that this is the third time in six years that an emergency status was declared. And further to that he addressed the need for something more to be done. According to Devolin, the O.P.P. flew drones over the flooding to get static images and video, which Devolin suggested could be used to rally MP’s and MPPs for further action.
The emergency status lasted 12 days.