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HAY RIVER - Hay River has made it through this year's spring breakup with less flooding than anticipated.

For a time last week, Mayor Jean-Marc Miltenberger was predicting this year's flooding could be on a par or worse than last spring.

Ira Cayen, 8, watches ice flow down the West Channel of the Hay River on May 6. He and his family evacuated their home in the West Channel residential area on Vale Island. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

In 2008, flooding caused about $1 million in damage.

Speaking on Friday as the water levels in the Hay River were falling, Miltenberger said the town did suffer a substantial amount of flooding in Old Town on Vale Island.

"We were impacted," he said. "We did flood."

However, he had not heard of any damages to residences, other than one home with some wet insulation.

"The damage is still to be determined at this point," he added.

Miltenberger said, based on all the information the town had, "severe" flooding had been expected.

After high water and ice threatened for a couple of days, flooding began in Old Town late Wednesday afternoon

Floodwaters covered stretches of two streets near the East Channel by Wednesday evening, while Fisherman's Wharf and sections of Hay River Beach were covered by water and ice.

The flooding was triggered when an ice jam in a gorge below Louise Falls, about 40 km upstream, broke free at about 2 a.m. Wednesday and headed towards Hay River.

The river's West and East Channels - already jammed with ice - saw water levels rise even higher when the pressure wave from the Louise Falls ice jam hit at about 5 a.m., followed by more ice a little more than an hour later.

For most of Wednesday morning, ice and water rumbled down the West Channel, while the ice in the East Channel did not move as the water inched higher.

Miltenberger explained that the water and ice from the jam below Louise Falls hit the town between speeds of 11 and 13 km an hour.

"It never lost speed," he said.

The flow of water and ice forced its way out the West Channel and into Great Slave Lake.

"It relieved a lot of the pressure," Miltenberger said.

There was no flooding in the West Channel residential area.

Residents of Vale Island, which includes Old Town and West Channel, had been strongly advised by the town on Tuesday evening not to spend the night in their homes, since there would only be a couple of hours notice when the ice jam below Louise Falls broke free.

For those who remained in their homes, the town notified them it was time to evacuate with sirens and honking horns.

Margaret Bouvier, a resident of Old Town, left her home at about 3:15 a.m. Wednesday after hearing warning sirens.

"I thought, "Oh my God, I better get out of here,'" she recalled while watching the ice in West Channel on Wednesday afternoon.

Bouvier said she was a bit nervous about whether the flooding would affect her home, adding that, while the breakup is an annual event, it never gets routine.

An evacuation notice for residents and businesses on Vale Island was lifted Thursday morning.

In all, 138 people evacuated their Vale Island homes, while others stayed on the island. The East and West Channels were clear of ice by Friday.

On the Hay River Reserve, an evacuation was lifted Friday for about 23 residents of Old Village on the East Channel. They had been out of their homes as a precaution since May 1.

Chief Alec Sunrise of K'atlodeeche First Nation said the Old Village road, which had been flooded at a low point, was reopened.

Speaking on Saturday, Sunrise said the damage in Old Village has yet to be determined.

Based on aerial surveys during the flooding, one trailer and the Roman Catholic church had been surrounded by water and may have sustained some damage.