Community members form a chain to lay sandbags around a Sexsmith home to protect it from flooding (Photo: Facebook / Brett Van Schaik)

By Shane Clausing

Sexsmith flooding

Town of Sexsmith pulls together to help fight flooding

Apr 23, 2020 | 1:17 PM

Community members in the Town of Sexsmith are pulling together to help with floods that have hit the town over the last week.

Late last week as the weather got warmer, lots of snow in the region began to melt quickly. By Monday night, the Grande Prairie Regional Emergency Partnership (GPREP) had issued an overland flooding alert for the Town of Sexsmith.

Just before the call for help came, Town Council was in a meeting when they got a call from Public Works saying that the town needs to mobilize their flooding plans immediately. Council shortened their meeting and got to work.

Public Works and GPREP arrived on the scene Monday night to help mitigate the issue. The Town of Sexsmith also sent out a call for help from residents on their Facebook page, so they could hopefully help prevent further flooding in the town.

“Thankfully, they (Public Works) had already set-up the pump so we had some preparation time,” explained Mayor for the Town of Sexsmith Kate Potter. “We put out the call on Facebook and within an hour we had over 75 volunteers and the Public Works break room was full of food and water and it just continued from there.”

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Mayor Potter says she couldn’t believe how many people showed up to help with the floods and found the response to be overwhelming.

“I cannot say enough about our community, they have been an incredible resource and encouragement. Everyday we’ve had hundreds of volunteers coming to fill and deploy sandbags, people helping their neighbours, we’ve had so many businesses helping donate meals and Stryker Energy has been hauling water for us non-stop since Wednesday, so that water doesn’t have to go through the creek.”

Council members have also worked around the clock to help residents with the flooding. They’ve been knocking on doors, helping on the assessment side and filling sandbags.

Potter and council’s response efforts have not gone unnoticed to one area resident, Sheryle Runhart, who said she made banana bread for all the volunteers earlier this week from ingredients donated by her neighbours in Webster.

“The mayor and council are literally in the trenches heaving sandbags along with hundreds of residents and volunteers and staff to save their town,” said Runhart. “Mayor Kate Potter is like no other I have ever seen… She will get her hands dirty. She truly cares about the people.”

The Town response has been so great they were able to tell GPREP workers to essentially go home on Wednesday night, because they already had so many people helping.

As of Thursday, Potter says that the town is still assessing the damage of the floods and adds they should know the extent of the damage by mid next week once the water subsides. Potter said that there has been some damage to the train tracks and a couple of homes in the area.

Mayor Potter added that she thinks the town hit the peak of flooding sometime yesterday.

“We have had some waters recede in a couple of our subdivisions, and even though the main creek has not dropped very much, there is a lot less water flowing and we’re moving more water by truck. It keeps much less water going down the main creek. We are cautiously optimistic about the water continuing to subside.”

Updates on the flooding in the region can be found here.