Boat rescue during Nipawin flooding saves family

A Saskatchewan family is facing heartbreak and uncertainty after rising waters swallowed their farm near Armley, south of Nipawin.

Sierra Bassingthwaite said her neighbours had to come by boat to rescue her family, including their dogs, from the property which is now completely underwater.

Read more:

• Meath Park homeowner says this year’s flooding is the worst in two decades
• Saskatoon prepares for Shoal Lake and Red Earth Cree Nation flood evacuees
• Saskatchewan floods: 15 states of emergency, residents use boats to evacuate stranded people

More than a dozen communities around the province have declared states of emergency due to the flooding this spring. The floods have left some communities cut off as the water washed out roads, while evacuees from two flooded First Nations are headed to Saskatoon and Prince Albert.

On Wednesday morning, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency reported 20 different flooding incidents around the province. There have been 26 incidents of flooding in Saskatchewan so far this year, the agency reported, well above the five-year average of seven.

“I’m devastated,” Bassingthwaite said, adding that her family is leaving all of their belongings behind.

“You have a couple pairs of clothes, but you’re leaving your house, like everything you own. You don’t know what’s going to happen to it.”

Sierra Bassingthwaite said her neighbours had to come by boat to rescue her family, including their dogs, from the property which is now completely underwater. (Sierra Lynn/Facebook)

For Bassingthwaite, it’s more than just a farm that was lost. It’s their entire lives.

“I honestly can’t even articulate myself very well when it comes to explaining what I was thinking or what I was going through,” she said.

“This is all such a blur to me. It has been hard to really cope with what I’ve gone through.”

She said seeing the farm wash away came a year after her dad was sick in the hospital.

“We thought we were going to lose him, and it took so long for him to recover,” she explained.

“As he has recovered, we’ve been starting to rebuild our life on the farm again, and we had so much hope for a future, and now this happens, and it’s like, what kind of hope can a person have now?”

For now, Bassingthwaite said her family is staying at a hotel in Nipawin. She said all they can do now is wait for the water to go down and hope insurance covers what has been lost.

“This is all such a blur to me,” said Sierra Bassingthwaite. “It has been hard to really cope with what I’ve gone through.” (Sierra Lynn/Facebook)

“It is day by day right now, trying to manage our stress levels, because my dad’s health condition gets worse with stress, so it’s making sure we are just talking things out with each other,” she said.

“Really, all we have right now is each other.”

While the water typically rises every year, Bassingthwaite said she has never seen a flood this bad in the 17 years she has lived there.

“Never would I have expected this to happen,” she added.

“As we were leaving by boat, there was a telephone pole along the road, and it had a little marker on it from 1957 where the highest (water) was back then, and the water is definitely way over that now.”

–with files from 650 CKOM’s Roman Hayter