'It was splashing over the windshield': Woman describes flight from flood in N.W.T.'s Paradise Gardens

As floodwaters from the Hay River rose in Paradise Gardens Sunday night, a neighbour knocked on the door of Bhreagh Ingarfield and her partner Thomas Whittaker's log home.

It was Roger Candow, a longtime river watcher. He told them, "You've got to go now — the water's rushing over the road," recalled Ingarfield.

The couple had been watching water levels rise and fall for days, waiting for them to go down like usual. When they bought their house in the fall with the hopes of opening a bed and breakfast, no one could remember flooding ever reaching near the property — not even during the flood of 1963.

They'd finally started to relax, when the knock came. They were out of time.

"As we left, we suddenly got to a portion of the road where you could just see the water pouring over the bank ... across the oxbow, heading into people's yards and greenhouses and houses. We kind of just went, 'Oh, my God, this is for real. It's all going to flood,'" Ingarfield said.

If they stayed at the house, they would be stranded. The only alternative was to drive their truck through water so deep it came up over their windshield. A video of the journey shows water splashing up the side windows as well.

"At one point, my partner was saying, 'You have to gun it, you have to gun it!' But the pedal was already to the floor and the force of the river going over the road was just pushing us," she recalled.

"It was splashing over the windshield as we were going."

Paradise Gardens lies in an oxbow, or U-shaped bend, of the river, connected to the Mackenzie Highway by Paradise Road, which hugs the curve of the river. The general area is known as Paradise Valley — an agricultural haven about halfway between Enterprise and Hay River.

Candow told CBC the river usually lies about 25 feet down from the top of the riverbank. The water came up fast and, when it crested the bank, flooded across the narrowest part of the oxbow.

He's been an official river watcher for all of the 14 years he's lived in Paradise Gardens.

"I've never seen it like this. Some of the residents who've been down here for 40 years have never seen it like this," he said.

His house is on a higher part at the end of the oxbow, and he's hoping it's still dry. The important thing, though, is that all the people have gotten out, he said — they can rebuild if they need to.

"The rest of it's just material stuff, it can all be replaced," he said.