Provincial officials continued to struggle with severe weather conditions this past weekend.

Government Relations official Duane McKay says there are currently 79 communities in Saskatchewan that have declared local states of emergency with 26 of those declarations set to expire by end of day Monday.

McKay says central parts of the province experienced the most extreme weather conditions over the weekend.

“Some rain, large hail across the central part of the province and we did have a report of two tornado touch downs – one near Outlook which took down a building and damaged another one,” he says.

Little Black Bear First Nation Chief Clarence Bellegarde says his community has been managing to deal with local flooding issues.

“We had two major washouts on our main road which actually cut off about 12 houses from entering the reserve and leaving the reserve,” he says. “So, we finally got that cleared up on Friday, we had new culverts put in on one end so that vehicles can leave the reserve now from the east end.”

Bellegarde adds local officials have been fixing roads damaged by the flooding over the past few days and they hopeful with improved weather conditions this week water levels will begin to subside.

Little Black Bear is one of six Saskatchewan First Nations that have declared local states of emergency.

The others are Star Blanket, Ochapowace, Peepeekisis, Kawacatoose, and Cowessess First Nations.