Getting water heaters and furnaces into homes of those who need them before winter hits has been keeping officials with the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program hopping.
The largest focus so far has been on Maple Creek, still reeling from the severe flooding that hit the community during the summer.
PDAP has been working with the town and with SaskPower and SaskUtility to set up new furnaces for the residents who need them. Tom Young, executive director of protection and emergency services with the Ministry of Corrections, Public Safety and Housing, said during a conference call with reporters that PDAP has been working to identify those needing furnaces, either by following up on their own application forms or through the use of $3000 advance payments through PDAP.
Gas inspectors had identified 93 addresses where work had already been done and Young believes several flood victims would have used an initial $3000 advance payment under PDAP for that work.
There were still, however, a handful of furnaces in Maple Creek as of Sept. 27 that were "red-tagged" and needed to be replaced or had to be significantly serviced.
A team led by the building standards unit went ahead and began looking at how to bring all the information together to determine what the need was, Young said. Through that, another 10 furnaces were identified as needing replaced or serviced.
The town also took on a number of volunteers who went door-to-door and inquired whether people needed furnaces or hot water heaters, and finalized two-thirds of the home.
That information was compared to the information PDAP had compiled and it was determined another 11 additional new homes needed furnaces, 12 needed hot water heaters, 36 needed gas inspections and 13 needed electrical heaters. Roughly some 70 inspections or new appliances were needed there, Young said.
A toll-free number is available to call for those people in the province who may have been missed by the process, at 1-888-799-8999.
They still have to canvass another 300 homes in the Maple Creek area, but Young believes the majority of the needs have been addressed have been addressed so far.
He said the strategy was needed, in particular because of the "pending onset of cold weather."
Maple Creek has been the number one priority area so far due to the damage there, but Young said other flood-hit areas can expect similar efforts in the weeks to come.
"Our ministry is working province-wide to expand the initiative in Maple Creek to other areas of the province," Young said. He said other areas of the province can expect to see this rolled out in the coming next few weeks.
The city of North Battleford was also one of those hit hard by flooding this summer. By most accounts, the scale of the damage was far more extensive in the Maple Creek and southwest area, which saw the Trans-Canada highway shut down for a number of days because of the flooding.
