The flood of July 1, is one of those moments in this city's history which is having its ripple effects even now five months later, and will well into the new year for many residents.
We only need to drive down Broadway Street to see the continuing impact.
McDonald's remains closed as work is under way to repair the damage the high water caused.Where Dairy Queen once sat there is now only an empty lot, with no public announcement yet regarding when a new building might be started.
Then there is the Yorkton Public Library. The Broadway location remains closed, with the investigation of the water damage leading to the discovery of additional shortcomings in the building. The results are such that the City now faces upgrade costs at the building nearing three-quarters of a million dollars, an amount Yorkton Council has already decided to proceed with.In the meantime the library is 小蓝视频 housed in the Parkland Mall with only a portion of its former collection available to the public.
As much as the business closures from the flood are most noticeable, the most dramatic impact from July 1, are those it had in forcing people from their homes.
In many cases people had to live with weeks and even months of upheaval in their homes awaiting tradesmen to have the time to replace everything from carpets, to drywall to furnaces.
As much as that was an irritant for people, a worse situation is for those who are still out of their homes.
As was detailed in a Yorkton This Week feature last Wednesday there are still about two dozen people living at SIGN On Broadway because their homes are still not liveable.
It's hard to imagine what it must be like to be living in what are essentially hotel rooms for 150 days. A hotel might be a nice place for a weekend get away, it is less nice as a place of residence for months.
The situation of those left homeless these months later is if the safety net program to deal with a flood, in this case the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program is flawed.
The government itself recognizes shortcomings in PDAP with the impact of flooding across the province this summer, and took measures to enhance aspects of the program, but that hasn't helped the local people living at SIGN.
To be fair no program will ever solve every problem for everyone, and the high number of claims does slow down a system never designed to deal with the level it has faced in 2011.
But a program such as PDAP does need to be flexible enough to ensure people have real homes. The idea that the system might have holes large enough to have people celebrating Christmas in a hotel room half a year after even a massive storm, suggests some changes are still needed.
