Fort Albany and Kashechewan First Nations being evacuated as Albany River floods
Ont. aboriginal community evacuated amid flood fears
Fri. Apr. 25 2008
Residents in the flood-prone northern Ontario aboriginal community of Kashechewan were being evacuated Friday as melting ice has caused water levels to rise rapidly.
Local leaders declared an emergency, prompting the evacuation.
Residents are being evacuated by a priority list, with children, the elderly and those hospitalized being removed first, CTV reporter David McGowan told CTV Newsnet from Timmins, Ont.
Those being evacuated have to be flown out, with hospital patients being removed by medivac.
Residents are being flown to Sault Ste. Marie, Cochrane, Greenstone and Geraldton, all in northern Ontario, by charter planes.
Barry Radford, a spokesman for Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources, said the evacuation had been planned about a year in advance.
"This year we're experiencing the highest water level flows and ice that we've seen in sometime, the last time we saw anything near this magnitude was in 2006 and we're well above those flow levels,'' he said.
Along with the Kashechewan First Nation reserve, the nearby community of Fort Albany is also being evacuated. In total, about 3,600 people are being moved.
The first group landed in Cochrane this morning. Local Red Cross disaster teams are registering everyone coming off the planes and helping them to their new homes away from home.
"We will ensure that we know who has arrived and where they will be staying in order to facilitate contact with family and friends," Red Cross' Annie Burke said Friday in a news release.
The residents are expected to be away from their homes for about six to eight weeks.
Iceflows, about a metre thick, are flowing down the Albany River towards the communities and there is fear that the melting ice could breach the dykes protecting Kashechewan.
Kashechewan is familiar to most Canadians as the community evacuated in 2005 because of problems with their drinking water supply.
Flooding concerns are an annual right-of-passage for the community, McGowan said. Recently, Kashechewan residents, along with the federal government, decided not to move the community to another location.
All levels of government are currently involved in the evacuations.
With files from The Canadian Press