St-Lazare homes under water due to flooding

CTV Winnipeg: Manitoba town left inundated Ben Miljure on homes in the village of St. Lazare, Man. near the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border, left under water.

As people along the lower Assiniboine River prepare for possible flooding, some other parts of the province are already under water.

The village of St-Lazare has been left inundated.

The Assiniboine and Qu'Appelle rivers converge in the town, about 160 km northwest of Brandon near the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border.

Gisele Fouillard's ATV can navigate some of the floodwater on her property, but if she wants to leave she has to hitch a ride in a tractor.

"Yesterday is when it really hit me. Like, you know what, I'm really locked in now. You know you've got that feeling...anxiety,” she said.

The bridge in the area has been closed since Friday and some houses sit under water and are now cut off from the town.

"What we're seeing now with the various peaks they're announcing, it seems like a moving target. We're probably at least a week or two before the water recedes enough to allow traffic,” said Martin Dupont, the mayor of St-Lazare.

A fast-flowing creek covers a crop potentially worth thousands of dollars and that is just a portion of the farmland underwater in the area.

"Our land is basically becoming….useless. You can't keep seeding land that's going to flood,” she said.

Fouillard also has water in her basement and had to rip out renovations done to repair damage from the last flood in 2011.

"I had it under control until about two days ago and it started to seep in through the floor,” she said.

At least one councillor from the RM of Ellice wants to know why the province hasn’t had a more visible presence in the area.

"Haven't heard from anybody and we barely got any compensation in 2011 either. I don't know - they don't seem to worry about us out here,” said Denis Fouillard.

When the water finally recedes, Giselle Fouillard plans to apply for disaster financial assistance.

Until then, people in St-Lazare watch the sky closely -- hoping they won’t see more rain.

The latest provincial flood forecast calls for increased flows on the Qu'Appelle River, with peak flows higher than the flood of 2011 arriving around July 14.