Flood abates, but impact widens: ‘It’s just a pile of rubbish there now’

SAINT JOHN, N.B. • For 48 years, Jerry McFarland’s rustic cottage on New Brunswick’s Grand Lake was a cherished refuge for family and friends, where precious summertime memories were carefully recorded in wellworn journals.

Today, McFarland’s cottage is in ruins, shoved off its foundation and torn apart on the weekend by rising flood waters.

“It was a million-dollar property, to me,” the 84-yearold Fredericton resident said Monday. “It’s just a pile of rubbish there now ... with the thrashing of the water.”

With the flooding in central New Brunswick finally stabilizing after reaching record levels on the weekend, residents are beginning to contend with devastating property damage caused by flooding, as well as a potentially serious health risk.

New Brunswick’s Emergency Measures Organization warned on Sunday that many sewage systems have been overwhelmed by the flooding.

“The flood water can be heavily contaminated with sewage as a result and people need to be mindful of the health risks, the risks of infections that come with that, as well as the risk of sickness and gastrointestinal illness,” said EMO director Greg MacCallum.

The EMO is telling people not to use private well water affected by flooding until it’s been disinfected and tested.

MacCallum said water levels in the southern half of the province were expected to continue to rise slowly over the next few days, and it would be late in the week before they’d begin to recede.

Emergency officials have been urging residents in flooded areas to evacuate their homes, but many have chosen to stay put — using sandbags and pumps to try to protect their properties.

McFarland’s cottage was one of many on Grand Lake that were swept away on Saturday as powerful winds pushed the big lake to places it had never reached before.

“On Saturday the wind was wild,” he said. “It was really the wind that blew the waves ... It was the wind that really knocked down the cottages.”

Pictures posted on social media show cottages, trailers and other recreational gear floating away.

McFarland, a retired school district supervisor with four grown children, said his cottage had survived previous floods that reached historic levels in 1973 and 2008. And it was in 2008 that he raised the one-storey building by 18 inches, using concrete blocks.

“I was sure that I would never get flooded,” said McFarland. “But nothing like this has been recorded before in our history.”

Localized flooding is practically an annual event in this part of central New Brunswick. In late April and early May, heavy rains combine with the melting snow pack in northern New Brunswick to engorge the mighty Saint John River and its tributaries, which comprise a vast basin along the west side of the province.

Grand Lake, a 45-minute drive east of Fredericton, is the province’s largest lake at 20 kilometres long and five kilometres wide. It drains through the Jemseg River into the Saint John River east of Gagetown.

McFarland said he and his family will miss the cottage, but he’s thankful no one was hurt.

Rebuilding is not an option, given the expense, he said. However, McFarland has his eye on a used motorhome that he might park on his lakeside property.

The loss of the cottage journals will be keenly felt by his entire family, he said.

“Those are the memories we had from every day, and those are gone,” he said, noting that his late father wrote the first entry in 1970. “It’s an emotional thing as well as a tactile thing ... I hope that they might possibly be around, but I doubt it.”

McFarland said the cottage was insured, though he’s sure the policy doesn’t offer coverage for flooding.

Meanwhile, provincial officials said flood waters were expected to peak Monday in the Saint John area of southern New Brunswick. At one point, the river rose to 5.7 metres above sea level at Saint John, where flood stage is 4.2 metres.

Levels in other areas of the province, including Fredericton and Maugerville, were also forecast to recede throughout the week, while remaining above flood levels.

In Hampton, about 40 kilometres northeast of Saint John, Blair Hyslop said he has been manning pumps 24 hours a day since Friday.

“We put the word out for volunteers and dozens and dozens of people came,” said Hyslop, who runs Kredl’s Corner Market.

MacCallum added the cleanup will be a “difficult phase.”

“This is a period of time when people do need to be patient. They need to understand that it is as deliberate an operation to go back as it is to get out.”