Calgary floods: Preventing another disaster

Ten years ago, a disaster of extraordinary proportions changed the lives of thousands of Calgarians, leading to changes in the infrastructure of the city to prevent that from happening again.

Heavy rainfall triggered disastrous flooding on June 19. The water of the Bow and the Elbow rivers raised, flooding the downtown area, thousands of businesses and homes.

“Though we were prepared, that event was significant and, in many ways, overwhelmed the response capacity that we had at that time,” said Frank Frigo, manager of the climate environment business unit with the City of Calgary.

Most will never forget the floods, including disaster social scientist at Mount Royal University Timothy Haney.

He says he and his wife were expecting their first son at the time.

“I was really just hoping that we would hang on for a couple more days because we’ve heard that some of the roads around Calgary were closed,” Haney explained.

“There were portions of 16 [Avenue] that were closed, portions of Glenmore were closed, portions of Deerfoot were closed, and that was kind of stressing us out, especially because we had planned that our son was going to be born at the Birth Centre on 16 Avenue.”

Their plans had to change because of the flooding and road closures, leading to his wife giving birth at their home.

“Our son Evan was born June 23 during the flood and is about to turn 10 years old,” Hanney said.

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Since then, Haney has spent the last ten years working on a large multi-year project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Its purpose is to study Calgarian’s responses to recovery from experience in the 2013 flood.

“It helped bring them back together as a community and so on, because it was the situations of need, leaning on one another for support. That was really crucial for them,” Haney explained.

“That was an interesting finding right there. It can actually strengthen communities, not just break apart communities.”

With a clear understanding of this tragic event, several measures have been taken since to prevent something like that happens again.

“Since 2013, work has been happening not only at a municipal level, but at a provincial level, and with other partners including partners at the hydropower industry, irrigation industry, all across the water management industries that collectively manages the water resources in Alberta,” Frigo said.

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Recently, the downtown Calgary Flood Barrier was completed, extending flood protection.

It runs all the way from the Peace Bridge all the way to Reconciliation Bridge at Edmonton Trail.

“I’m very pleased to be able to share with Calgarians that important statistic run more than 55 per cent risk have been eliminated today and within a couple of years bringing that up to 71 percent,” Frigo said.