Saturday, June 22, 2013

Flood in Calgary

The amount of rain in Alberta this year has been significantly increased compare to the all previous years that I can recall. It started even before we went to Innisfail. I wanted to have a post and say how it looked like B. C. here but postponed it until all the rainfall resulted in flood. 
So at work today more than 80 per cent of the people were missing. The level of water both at Bow River and Elbow River was so high that the City ordered mandatory evacuation in many neibourhoods around the two rivers. I got a chance to walk by Bow River shortly after 01:00 PM yesterday (Fri.) and it was amazing how fast and up the river was. Memorial Dr., Crowchild Tr. and many other roads to the Downtown were shut and the C-Train service was cancelled. I guess we are among a few Downtown neighbourhoods which were not included in the evacuation plan. 
High River I heard has been even worse and in the City again it is said that the Saddledome and the entire Stampede Park has been drowned! I try to see what I will see this morning. 
What shocked me the most was not the flood or the amount of rain. It was the way that people were reacting to that. At work people sending e-mails and had the radios turned on. One of them sent a map of the City indicating the road closures! My answer to that was that I would be paddling my Kayak back home and neither of the road closures and flood would not affect me.The other one was talking about storing clear water and in fact I saw an idiot with plastic bags full of bottle bottles when I came back to the apartment!  I eventually told one of the colleagues that they just were making too much of it and I added that I never had left were missing were landing in my hometowns years ago and this flood was nothing compare to that. 
(Photo: Bow River, the bank where Memorial DR. follows it and Louise Bridge. You can see the set of stairs on the bellow left of the photos. The stairs leads to the pathway where I usually run and it is completely hidden under the water in this photo. The photo was taken between the hours of 13:00 and 14:00 of yesterday)

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