Province will assess roads washed out from flooding in Lac La Biche

Washed out roads throughout Lac La Biche County will be assessed over the next few days.

The provincial government will be assessing their infrastructures to figure out when they will be safe to open them back up to the public.  

“The water is starting to go down so we are hoping all of our highways and roads will be opening up soon,” said Mayor Omer Moghrabi on Monday.

“We have never seen this much water and flooding in Lac La Biche, so under the circumstances, I think we dealt with it pretty well. You can’t predict mother nature.”

Lac La Biche County announced on Tuesday morning that Highway 881 is still closed due to flooding and they recommend industrial traffic headed to Fort McMurray to take Highway 63 through Anzac.  

Other areas of concern due to high water levels are the Amisk River bridge, Pinehurst Lake and Touchwood Lake. 

There is water on Old Trail, but it is safe to drive on as long as people drive slowly and take necessary precautions. 

The County acted fast to protect its residents from potential sewage being backed up into their homes and flooding by evacuating certain areas of the hamlet after they declared that Lac La Biche was in a local state of emergency.

Luckily, there was no sewage backup into residents’ houses as the lift stations were able to handle it.

There was, however, many people left with flooded basements. 

Moghrabi stands by the decision to evacuate and believes they did everything they could to deal with the unpredictability of the floods. 

“We wanted to make sure everyone was safe, so the best way to do that was to call a local state of emergency so we could have the authority to evacuate people,” said Moghrabi.

Most of the evacuees have been sent home, but due to road closures their commute into town went from a 2 or 3-minute drive to 40-minutes. 

For evacuees that need help with their homes due to flooding call the Emergency Social Services staff at (780) 623-6396.