Fire chief reflects on flood recovery seven months later
Posted Jan 27, 2014 4:59 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Calgary is four years away from bouncing back completely from the flood.
That’s the aggressive goal the city’s fire chief has set for Calgary.
Bruce Burrell addressed the Chamber of Commerce Monday to talk about what work has been done, and what still needs to be done moving forward.
He used the word “aggressive” himself to describe how hard the Recovery Operations Centre has been working to restore Cowtown to what it was, and in some cases, even better than what it was.
Burrell said it’s amazing how resilient the city has been, and how small business continues to thrive.
He estimated less than one per cent of business in Calgary won’t reopen following the flood, and that number should have been significantly higher.
“I am shocked that it’s that low, I think that speaks to the model that we’ve put in place in the City of Calgary, and the support that’s been provided by the BRZs (the Business Revitalization Zones), the Centre city zone, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, by all the people that came out together and decided to support the small business community,” he said. “We know statistically small businesses are most prone to failure after natural disasters.”
Burrell added, while we don’t know what the forecast will be yet for this June, we will be more prepared.
“There’s so many different initiatives out there, it’s hard to pick one,” he said. “We are actually going to be working in all facets of the city where infrastructure is damaged and looking at how to do it better, but as we rebuild it to make sure that we’re protecting it from future incidents.”
Burrell said an early snow melt like this year’s is ideal, because it will mean a disaster on that scale won’t occur aga
