Operations Coordinator City of Winnipeg Insect Control Branch, Manitoba, Canada
Abstract: Living in the prairie flood plain region poses a unique set of problems for Winnipeg. We can go from little standing water to extensive flooding within 24 hours. As such larvicide activities go from slow to overloaded quickly. Managing the workload has required some unique solutions both in equipment and choice of larvicides.
Often large rainfall events are followed by high wind conditions making the need for a timely response critical and often difficult. To help mitigate the large workload, we have adopted a pre-hatch strategy for both our ground and aerial applications.
Much of our ground mosquito development congregates in ditches, some of these often large. We have a wide variety of equipment to tackle different types of larvicide and different ditch sizes. Accessibility to sites also poses its own set of problems, and although some can be tackled by air, some cannot.
