MURRAY SIDING - In the four years she's lived on Bridgeview Drive, Tiffanie Lynds has never had to evacuate her home. Until yesterday.
"I had heard the fire truck and looked outside - all I saw was water," said Lynds, who lives in a mobile home with her boyfriend. "The firefighters said they were advising us it would be best to evacuate now because of the water level."
With roughly two dozen other mobile homes in the park, the residents came outside, Lynds said, to see many of their cars already under a high pool of water at 6 a.m.
"Most of the cars were, but mine wasn't because of my higher driveway, so we got out of the house and were able to drive out."
She said another neighbour, when she opened the door, was already stepping in water.
"She would've been up to her knees at her car," she said.
With the water receding significantly by the afternoon, Lynds wasn't concerned about water flooding her house.
"It's a mini home, so it would have to go up another three feet or so, but my shed is completely in water. I'm not sure if anything in there is ruined, because we haven't been able to get in."
Since living in the home, Lynds said she only came close to evacuating once.
"We were warned, but we didn't have to. The water wasn't nearly as bad," she said.
Following the evacuation, Lynds went to her parents' home in Truro.
Several residents were also evacuated from an apartment building on the corner of Park Street and Marshland Drive as well as the Comfort Inn on Robie Street. Evacuees were taken to emergency shelters at Immanuel Baptist Church on Young Street and the Bible Hill Fire Hall. No injuries were reported as of press time.
However, some residents decided to stay in their homes in spite of the rising water to save what they could from flooding basements.
"We're going to stick it out," Park Street resident Jim Barron said while standing in his basement in about eight inches of water "Everything is moved upstairs."
His neighbour, Rae Dennis, was also busy with her family moving things from their basement and parking their vehicles on higher ground as the water swept around them with river-like force in spots.
"We're trying to get what we can out of the water. We've been through this before," she said of living in their home for the past 48 years. "But this is worse."
Both Dennis and Barron credited that to the rising waters climbing over the dike along the Salmon River.
"We weren't worried at all," Barron said of the wet weather over the past few days. "I didn't think it would really bother us but the dike broke and the tide came up and that's what did it. That's when we started getting worried."
But Barron said he wasn't surprised by Monday's events across the county.
"It's a well-known fact this is flood area," he said.
