MARSH LAKE – There was a curious sense of optimism and good cheer in the air around Marsh Lake on Wednesday afternoon as homeowners continued to battle to protect their properties from the rising flood waters.

Richard Mostyn, the minister of Community Services, staged a media conference on Army Beach Drive to discuss the situation as members of the Canadian Armed Forces worked in the background.

Machinery roared and men shouted as they filled sandbags and hauled them away.

Mostyn called it the largest flood mitigation effort in the history of the Yukon, but it was the voices of the residents who spoke more eloquently to the situation.

“Everybody’s just doing the best they can,” Paul Cairns said.

His family has owned a property on Army Beach Road for more than 30 years.

There was approximately four feet of water in his crawl space, and his family was struggling to keep a wall of sandbags intact against the encroaching water.

A few days ago, one of the sandbag walls had started to collapse and neighbours rallied quickly to repair it.

“There’s a lot of bags here, and a lot more to go yet,” Cairns said. “We’re going to put a sump in the ground.

“I wasn’t here in 2007, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Cairns said, gesturing to an ominous-looking Marsh Lake lapping at the property.

“I’ve been here at least 10 days now.”

He estimated the protective walls consisted of at least 5,000 sandbags so far.

Cairns said he thought that number would eventually grow to 10,000 between the family property and an adjacent neighbour’s. Many of the residents are working co-operatively in the race against the water.

He said one of the problems residents faced was a lack of information and training on how to properly build a sandbag berm.

“We built them to what EMO told us only to find out that’s not right. This wall here,” Cairns said, gesturing to his left, “started to to fall over, and we re-packed it.

“Then this wall here,” he added, pointing to his right, “fell over and we had to repack it.”

He was surprised and disconcerted to hear the Manitoba flooding consultants have told the Yukon government the sandbag berms may have to reach as high as eight to 10 feet to offer adequate protection. That information arose during the media conference.

“The army was just here this (Wednesday) morning and didn’t mention it,” he said. “How are we supposed to do that? That’s just a big panic and scary.”

Last year, Cairns said, he has photos of a lovely beach stretching nearly 60 metres (200 feet) out from the property. “That’s long gone.”

He had taken some measurements of the water over the last three days, and he said it was rising approximately 3 1/2 inches a day.

He estimates the peak of the flood won’t occur until mid-August, which mirrored what Mostyn had to say during the news conference.

Mostyn and incident commander Mike Smith said the closest approximation they could make for an estimate of when the water would peak was the flood of 2007. At that time, the waters didn’t start to recede until late August.

Mostyn said that was a best guess based on past history. The current flood could still be heavily impacted by rainfall events and temperature.

The snowpack in the mountains are starting to be depleted, but weather is totally unpredictable, Mostyn and Smith said.

A youth hockey team was working next door, indicating just how many people were responding to the pleas for help.

Donna Hindle lives a few properties away from Cairns.

“One day this week, we saw the water starting around at us from the cul de sac,” she said.

“I wasn’t here in 2007. It’s a force of nature. You can’t stop it when it wants to come at you. All you can do is get ready for it.

“But everybody’s working together as much as they can, and helping out.

“With the snow we had last winter, everybody expected it was going to be bad. And we kept coming closer and closer. Most residents were trying to figure out how they were figuring it.

“It’s a little disheartening.”

During the media conference, Mostyn said several areas around the Yukon are experiencing historic water levels. That’s led to a “monumental” effort to help contain the situation.

“(Last) Sunday I drove throughout this region, and on Canada Day as well,” he said. “The response from residents has been amazing.

“We’ve been at this since about the beginning of June. We’ve been ramping up effort since. We have about 60 government employees working here. We’ve got seven flood specialists from Manitoba who came up over the weekend.

“We also have approximately 100 people from the armed forces. Quite frankly, we don’t have the resources to fight the pandemic we currently have, as well as the floods and the fire danger.”