Kasabonika partially evacuates due to high water levels

Kasabonika Lake First Nation has evacuated about 150 residents due to rising waters that washed out the community’s access road and threatened to bring down hydro poles and the bridge leading to the community.
A state of emergency was declared on May 23 and the community’s vulnerable residents were evacuated over the weekend, with 112 residents being evacuated to Hearst while 34 were flown to Geraldton.
On May 27, the situation improved as water levels stabilized and no further evacuations were planned.
That same morning, however, Kasabonika lost a youth to suicide, which has added pressure to an already tense community.
Mitchell Diabo, Kasabonika’s project manager, said the loss of a young life has put the community into “another mode.”
“Things were getting stabilized, now it’s become unstable,” he said. “Now we have another crisis.”
This is first time in recent history that Kasabonika has had to be evacuated due to the threat of flooding. It was previously evacuated because of forest fires.
While the rate of the rising waters surrounding the community has steadily decreased over the past two days, Kasabonika’s leaders remain extremely concerned about the state of the bridge leading into the community and the hydro poles lining the main road.
“The integrity of the footings of the bridge seem have some erosion,” said Mitchell Diabo. “And some of the guy-wires have slack on the hydro poles going across the lake alongside the bridge.”
Diabo said they restricted access to the bridge over the weekend to essential traffic but opened it to passenger and lighter vehicles on May 27.
The community has contacted the Ministry of Transportation to inspect the bridge as well as Hydro One to inspect the hydro poles but has not received a response as of May 27.
“If the lines go down, they’ll be laying in the lake – live hydro lines,” Diabo said.
A portion of the community’s access road has been washed out and vehicles must drive through at least a foot of water to reach the bridge.
Because of the rising waters, Kasabonika also had issues with flooding in its sewage plant. Raw sewage had to be pumped out of the plant and discharged into the lake.
But after the emergency was declared, technicians arrived and blocked off the intake to prevent any further flooding.
Diabo said it has been a frustrating experience undergoing the state of emergency. He described the process as “quite formalized,” involving a number of federal and provincial agencies, including Emergency Management Ontario (EMO), Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development of Canada, Health Canada, and the Ministry of Natural Resources, among others.
Once the state of emergency was formally declared, the evacuees waited more than 24 hours – “with bags packed” – while a host community was sought.
“Sometimes I feel the community is lost in the management of process versus the substantive issues, like in the fight between the agencies involved to determine who’s going to accept our people,” he said. “That’s what really ticks me off.”
With the community close to returning to normal, Diabo is unsure how the loss of the youth will impact the evacuees.
“I’m not sure if they’ll be wanting to come back,” he said.