As floodwaters recede in New Brunswick, people are slowly going back to their homes and cottages to assess the damage caused by this year’s disastrous spring flooding.
Many people will be dealing with substantial property damage, but one family is just happy they managed to locate their cottage after it floated away.
The Grand Lake camp was presumed to have been destroyed by the flood until a neighbour discovered it tangled in a tree.
“I went out for a walk Saturday afternoon and I walked down to the shore, where I could see along the shoreline,” Delberta Flood told the CBC.
“I saw a building and I thought, ‘What is that?’ So, I got closer and it was a camp. A complete camp. Fully intact. Floating in the water, up next to the shore.”
Other than not having a front door, the house looked like it was in surprisingly good shape.
“It had curtains in the windows and just looked like it was supposed to be there,” Flood told the National Post.
She snapped a few photos of the home and posted them on Facebook. A few hours later she got a message saying “That’s my camp!”
Aaron Moore, the owner of the cottage, told Flood that the home was originally located on the other side of the lake, where many buildings had been reduced to little more than lumber over the course of the previous few weeks.
Moore was planning on moving his in-laws, who had just arrived from Calgary, into the camp shortly before the flooding began.
“We were going to move all their stuff in there, but then the water started going up in Fredericton so we thought it may not be the best idea.”
Moore told the CBC that he’s still considering if it would be worth it to hire a crew to truck the cottage back across the lake to its original plot. However, it may be too costly to bother.
As to why the house didn’t capsize as it traveled across the lake, Moore credits his dad’s handiness for making it seaworthy.
“When we insulated the whole place, we put a bunch of spray-foam insulation underneath,” he told the CBC.
“Now I’m not an expert in boating or buoyancy or anything like that, but we kind of figure that might be what kept it afloat.”
According to the National Post, over 1,000 calls have come in to the provincial line for disaster assistance financial help, but there’s not a concrete estimate for the damage caused by this year’s flood.
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