Humboldt hit by flooding, second heavy storm in two weeks

Humboldt, Sask., residents are cleaning up after the second big rainstorm in a little over two weeks.

The latest downpour happened on Tuesday evening.

"We got hit with a substantial amount of rain in a very short period again," said Mayor Rob Muench.

The northwest part of the city was hit hardest, Muench said, with some neighbourhoods seeing water rise as high as60 centimetres.

Muench said the ground was still heavily saturated from a massive storm that rolled through the city on June 14. The water couldn't soak into the ground, so it flooded the streets and some basements until the sewer system could catch up.

"A lot of people were just still in cleanup mode from [thefirst storm]and then they get hit again," said Muench."I don't know if we had more rain the second time but it just seemed more because of the fact that the water had nowhere to go."

Muench said the city isassessing the damage to people's homesto see whether it will need to apply for provincial disaster relief.

"We're asking residents if they have had issues to just notify city hall sothat we can try to see wherethe worst parts were and whether we need to look at some sort of emergency relief from the province possibly," he said.

The city said Red Cross emergency kits are being made available to residents who need to clean up their flooded homes.

Muench commended members of the community who stepped in to take care of their neighboursor helped blockoff roads so that vehicles wouldn't drive into flooded areas.

"People pulled together, and I'm hoping that we don't have to go through this again."