Mennonite losses are large

David Dyck, the community’s co-chairman, told News Five that Blue Creek’s losses will run to around 6 million dollars.

David Dyck, Co-Chairman, Blue Creek

“Well this is spoilt. If it stays underwater more than a week, it’s lost. If it goes down quick, then we can still harvest it, but not if it stays longer. They expect this to last maybe for a month because it’s still going up.”

Stewart Krohn

“What’s that going to mean to the housewife and the rest of the country?”

David Dyck

“Well we have to eat something else. We have to eat cattle, we have lots of cattle and no grass.”

Stewart Krohn

“What are you going to do with all the cattle, that flying over, it looks like they were stranded out there with barely any land to graze?”

David Dyck

“I myself have 2,800 acres of land under water and we have maybe about 20% that’s grass and I don’t know what I’ll do with the cattle. I have to find something because I our road to the city is blocked off and so cannot haul them out to somewhere else, and in this area we don’t have any grass. I don’t know yet. We might canoe out for a month or so, but more than I month I don’t know what to do.”

Dyck said that he estimates that Blue Creek received approximately 30 inches of rain and that 95% of the community’s rice crop will be destroyed. He will attempt to move his 1,400 head of cattle to makeshift pastures on higher ground, but at present all roads out of the area are impassable by even the highest vehicles.