Northern family struggles to save home - Star Phoenix

Renee and Solomon Carriere never received a formal evacuation order.

But on June 22, after they had finished planting their garden, Renee heard on the radio that Cumberland House was being evacuated.

The Carrieres live in a wilderness home about 60 kilometres from the village. Renee went outside to her husband and said, "We'd better get out of here."

The couple started to make some initial preparations. By 5 a.m., their garden was under water and the flood was raging through their property. So began a whirlwind 48 hours, as they tried to save their home of 31 years and their livelihood - they offer dog sledding and canoe expeditions, and live a traditional lifestyle of hunting, fishing and trapping.

The Carrieres own 25 Alaskan huskies. Renee and Solomon each drove some to a ranch near Nipawin before friends arrived from Yorkton

with a boat to help secure their belongings as fast as they could.

Within the first 24 hours, they cut logs and used them to raise each of their 10 buildings by about 15 inches. They also packed as many of their goods, bedding and photographs as possible into their home's loft.

The Carrieres had previously harvested another 150 logs for a second home.

They broke up the beginnings of that building and fashioned the logs into a "Tom Sawyer-style" raft, Renee said, which they then lashed to the biggest trees they had. They loaded it with their most crucial equipment - a quad, snowmobile and doghouses, hoping it would float on the flood waters.

When they checked the raft on June 30, it was working.

But there was one thing they couldn't protect from the water: a small graveyard on their property that contains the remains of their daughter and each of their fathers. Their daughter's headstone is fixed in the ground. Renee's father's gravestone was loose, so they pried it off, and also removed an Italian Virgin Mary statue from Solomon's father's grave and stored it in their loft.

"That's what absolutely broke my heart, when I saw three feet of water over the graves, it just ... that's your home and that's just terrible," Renee said.

While residents of Cumberland House started returning home Wednesday, Renee said it will be a month before the water recedes from her home and the neighbouring 60 kilometres.

"It's a massive, massive area. And we're not talking two inches. We're talking, when you step out it's up to your waist," she said.

For now the couple, their three grown children and their two puppies are staying at a motel in Nipawin.

Renee called the flood a man-made disaster, arguing that had Highway 123 into Cumberland House been properly maintained over the years, some water could have been released from the E.B. Campbell dam earlier without fear of breaching the road.

She said there has to be accountability for both the damage to her property and to wildlife habitat.

"We have the data," she said. "We have the knowledge. So when all hell is breaking loose in Calgary, which was a natural phenomenon, we already have that data here in Saskatchewan ... they know how much water to be letting go."

Source: http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/saskatchewan/Northern+family+struggles+save+home/8614177/story.html

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