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Overflow mess

Jason Unrau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Jan 27/06) - With more than a dozen vehicles on his lot in varying degrees of icy submersion, Inuvik Auto owner Roland Petrin believes the town acted too late to stop the flood of overflow encroaching on his property.

NNSL Photo/graphic

Roland Petrin points to the ice he's had to chip away from a car in storage - the owner wants it back in light of the flood. - Jason Unrau/NNSL photo


"They know there's a drainage problem here because it floods every spring," he said.

A warmer than usual winter, combined with heavy snow cover, can result in enough insulation to keep water underneath from freezing.

These conditions were blamed for another flood in front of the Northmart over the holidays. Add a frozen culvert between Petrin's lot and his neighbour's and the resulting backup has frozen vehicles at Inuvik Auto in a massive block of ice.

With town public works manager Rick Campbell out of town, Greg Stromgren - in charge of utilidors for the town - was handling the situation on Monday. He was hopeful that the steamer was unplugging the culvert.

"We've been using heavy machinery to clear the ice away from the culverts so we could get the steamer at it," said Stromgren.

Powerful enough to generate 2000 lbs of pressurized water heated to 180C, Stromgren says the steamer is usually used to deal with frozen pipes in town's the utilidor system.

"There's about 10ft of water on the north side of the road there and we've marked it out with danger signs and caution tape, " added Stromgren. "There's no signs that it's backing up anywhere else, so that's good."

Unfortunately for Petrin and some of his customers storing vehicles on the lot, there's not a lot that can be done to salvage the cars until spring.

"Unless they can breach the water out, it will flood out the road in spring," predicted Petrin.