WHITEWATER REGION (LaPasse) — Residents of the Lacroix Bay area were entering day 23 of not being able to drive in or out of the area. Interviews with Whitewater News had to be completed by telephone, due to the boating ban on the Ottawa River, and residents are saying emergency officials are calling Lacroix Bay, “the worst flooded road in Renfrew County.”
Phil Cottrell and his wife Pierrette, began sandbagging around April 26. They have a marker on a bank from the 2017 flood, according to Mr. Cottrell. He says as of yesterday it was still above, but once it is lowered, he will attempt to drive out of his area in his Jeep. The water levels have been reported to be going down over the past few days and residents monitor the levels on the Ottawa River website.
“The biggest obstacle has been not getting too tired or cranky, and trying to maintain a sense of humour,” said Mr. Cottrell. He and Mrs. Collette are trying to keep up with their food intake and their overall health. One resident brings back meals from the Emergency Relief Centre in Westmeath for others in the area who are trapped. The army has moved out of the area but the Reserves remain.
According to residents, the whole area remains impacted in varying degrees. “Personally, we are not in such a bad situation, but we have a friend who’s lost his house which was a primary residence,” said Mr. Cottrell. “We have others who have had their basements totally ruined, others who’ve had their septic systems totally compromised. Our neighbour comes in for showers and laundry. The heartache, financial loss, general exhaustion and emotional toll is unbelievable.”
Mr. and Mrs. Cottrell have been keeping strange hours to keep up with their pumps and attempt to keep their basement from flooding. Starting off, they slept in shifts of 30 minutes each, gradually being able to increase their sleeping time to one hour, on the hour, on a 24 hour on-going basis.
When asked what he would like to see done, Mr. Cottrell had a simple response:
“We would like to see our municipal and our provincial governments step up to the plate more than they have been recently. The federal government did provide some assistance through the [Canadian] Red Cross and there could be another round of funding. Our MP should be pushing for more Federal assistance. Our MPP should be pushing for relaxing the restrictive rules around the Ontario Disaster Relief Program and looking at grants for affected home owners that don’t require applicants to jump through a series of hoops. Those at the municipal level should reexamine their disaster relief programs.”
Those who have been affected say they are not getting answers they deem to be good enough and the anger is beginning to build. “We also need some collective action here,” stated Mr. Cottrell. “Unfortunately, this is something that we are not very good at here. We need to demand meetings. We need to demand answers. We need to band together and confront our elected officials, including those responsible for controlling the river.”
As of May 22 at 4:00 p.m., the water levels at Fort-Coulonge read 108.65 meters.
