The CBC reports this morning that 800 people have been evacuated from Attawapiskat already. A special train will run from Moosonee to Cochrane today in order to bring some of the folks south. Moosonee already is over-crowded.
The big worry last night was that there were still too many people in the village — if things got nasty quickly. Once the water gets high enough, the air strip gets flooded. When that happens, there are a lot fewer options.
The Attawapiskat River is flooding — and rising — and getting crazy. The Village started evacuation yesterday. The rising water has already cut off access to the dump.
There still is ice up-river yet to break up. And, in addition to all of that, yesterday brought rain and strong winds. Part of the danger in this kind of situation is that things can happen so fast that even canoes at the ready are not enough. If the final flush that floods out the village is accompanied with sufficient ice, EVERYTHING (canoes included) goes. This happened in Peanuck (formerly Winisk) some years ago, and there was loss of life. It could easily happen, now, any day — or any hour — in Attawapiskat. In the old days, when situations like this developed in the spring, families would just load up the canoe and head for high ground in the bush — somewhere inland. Now, of course, many families do not have the equipment (and/or possibly skills) to do that.