Sixty-five homes in Souris are being evacuated as rising floodwaters continue to inch toward the Manitoba town.
With water from the Souris River predicted to peak on July 6, Souris emergency crews are racing to build up the dikes protecting the town.
The river's waters are expected to rise three metres, a figure that the town's emergency co-ordinator Sven Kreusch said he wasn't expecting.
Rising floodwaters have already swallowed the front yard of Bill Kirkup's home. As the water continues to inch closer, the Souris resident said he hopes his house won't be next.
"Time is what you try to buy, but Mother Nature doesn't offer that," Kirkup told CTV Winnipeg.
Meanwhile in Minot N.D., where unprecedented flooding forced thousands to evacuate the city last week, the Souris River has begun a steady retreat.
Though there has been no further flood damage in the city, officials are still warning that danger will remain for several days until the highest water has passed.
"We're still at full alert until the water starts going down," said Shannon Bauer, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "It's still a war."
Forecasts have called for the floodwaters to fall nearly 60 centimetres by Wednesday.
The news offers slight reprieve for more than 4,000 homes and hundreds of businesses that were inundated with rushing water when the Souris poured over the city's dikes last week.
The city's levees have since been reinforced with plastic sheeting to help them endure the sustained exposure to the water.
Despite receding water levels, Minot still faces a long road to recovery.
About a fourth of Minot's 40,000 residents were forced to leave their homes early last week in anticipation of flooding. Many of those residents will return home to water-damaged houses.
On Sunday, North Dakota National Guard soldiers were monitoring a submerged pedestrian bridge in Minot to make sure it didn't break off in the river channel. The bridge has been trapping debris and could harm nearby levees.
The Army Corps has also been busy sandbagging in Sawyer and Velva, two small downstream towns of a few hundred people that face crests later this week.
Heavy rainfall in the Souris River basin in southeast Saskatchewan and North Dakota is being blamed for the onslaught of water.
Dan Ruby, Minot's state representative, said Canadian water management teams did the best they could to handle the flooding.
He added that massive rainfall was impossible to predict and that Canadians shouldn't shoulder any blame for the Souris flooding.
The Rafferty and Alameda dams in southern Saskatchewan feed water into the Souris River, which loops down from Canada through north central North Dakota.
Saskatchewan put up $22 million for flood prevention programs in February and has added another $30 million since. Premier Brad Wall said last week that the figure could approach $100 million.
With files from CTV's Caroline Barghout, The Associated Press and The Canadian Press.
