This past Tuesday in downtown Swift Current some mild flooding was experienced.

A grand total of 23.2 millimetres fell during the day and resulted in minimal flooding in a portion of the downtown area.

A number of businesses were affected by this flooding, including the Cinema Twin, Me-Mart Filipino Sari-Sari Store, and Evans Brothers Home Hardware Building Centre store all experienced mild to moderate flooding.

The Cinema Twin - which is no stranger to flooding - has little to no water damage at all, thanks to some traffic directing and help from another member of the community.

In the last three years the Cinema Twin has experienced flooding three times, all a result of sudden torrential rains.

This year Kathy Pratt, the owner and operator of the Cinema Twin, decided to take matters into her own hands when dealing with the flood waters.

Pratt pulled her vehicle out into the intersection in front of the movie theatre in an attempt to stop people from driving through the impromptu river and sending waves into the building.

She explained, “with the cars that drive through and they come around here and drive 40-50 km/h around here and they send waves like five feet up our door, so that would have pushed all of the water into the auditoriums which would have been extremely dangerous.”

Lisa Dyck, an optician at Optical Image just down the street from the Cinema Twin, saw Pratt directing traffic and decided to help out.

Lisa Dyck (photo by Anthony Janzen)

She parked in the intersection of Central Avenue North and Cheadle Street East, hoping to direct traffic off of the one-way street so that Pratt could deal with traffic coming off of 1st Avenue Northeast, instead of having to direct traffic from both streets.

Pratt stated, “we probably diverted about 100 people so that saved us.”

The theatre said that the only water that they experienced in the building was a small amount in the lobby and a small amount in the basement as well.

There was no lasting damage to the theatre and it will not miss any showtimes.