Well, while I have been sitting here safely in Jasper complaining about the rain interfering with our touristy sightseeing, the area we have just come from (Banff, Canmore, HighRiver, and other areas in southern Alberta are literally underwater. They have had over 100mm (some areas reporting 200mm) in the last 36 hours which is causing massive flash flooding. Over six different communities have been evacuated moving approximately 7000 people out of their homes.
In Canmore, the sleepy little town we visited on Tuesday (it’s now Thursday evening) is being completely evacuated and houses along Cougar Creek are subsiding into raging waters! The news reports are full of footage of houses, fences washed away, cars left abandoned with water up to their windscreens (and you know how big their trucks are around here!) and shop fronts blocked off with sandbags as residents attempt to keep out the flood waters. There’s a gas line burst underwater in HighRiver that can’t be accessed to be repaired as it is under torrential floodwaters so it is leaking ‘sour gas’ (whatever that is) into the nearby area. Sections of the Trans Canada Highway are cracked up and have eroded in less than a day and two people are missing after their trailer washed away. 🙁
It seems the problem primarily stems from the waterways, rivers and streams being already full from the regular spring snow and ice melts, so when a huge unanticipated storm cell moves across the area at this time of year, it can cause this kind of phenomenal flooding. And as if things need to get any worse, they are expecting another 100mm+ over the next 24hrs, which could see even more areas affected by the flooding. The entire area around Calgary has been declared a state of emergency area and helicopters are evacuating people to higher ground.
It’s so bizarre watching these floods ripping through areas and destroying shops and homes, bridges and roadways, that we were travelling through just a couple of days ago. :S
Update: It’s getting worse. Over 12,000 people evacuated people trapped all over the place, people being lifed off their houses in escavator buckets, roads are washed out, severe mudslides destroying property, cars washed off roads into culverts, whole houses being washed away entirely in plaecs like Bragg Creek and then smashing into bridges and road overpasses. The military have been called in to help move people out and rescue those that are trapped by the fast rising waters. Many people barely manging to escape with their lives and their pets and unfortunately no sign of relief from the weather over the next few days, so it’s only going to get worse. Canmore seems to be right in the thick of it and all residents evacuated earlier, but now they are evacuating people from Calgary too which very rarely has mandatory evacuation orders out in place. Everyone out to higher ground for the next 72 hours. 🙁 There seems to be a lot of damage, a lot of panic and a lot of loss. I don’t know any of these people, but I can’t imagine what they are going through this whole thing has occured so suddenly and violently!
Update: Things in Canmore and Calgary in southern Alberta have continued to turn even uglier. Overnight more than 100,000 residents have been evacuated from their homes and flood waters continue to rise and three people are believed to have lost their lives. Over 500 members of the Canadian Military have been dispatched to assist with rescue efforts as people find themselves cut off by rapidly rising flash flooding and severely over capacity waterways, land and mudslides and torrential rain. 🙁 I heard on the news this morning that the Calgary Zoo was being evacuated. How on earth do you evacuate an entire zoo…?
Update: We are back in Vancouver now and people everywhere are asking us all about the floods whenever they hear we have just come back from the east. People are shocked and alarmed about the suddenness of it all… so even though they do get flooding out on the prairies about every ten years, it seems this year the floods are much worse than usual. Fairly quickly in the conversation, the fact that the Calgary ice hockey arena was flooded, and that up to the first eight rows of seating ended up underwater, swiftly followed by reassurances that the stadium will be cleaned up and repaired in time for the season start in October, and equally swift commentary that it doesn’t really matter because ‘their team sucks anyway, eh’.
