From the ruins: What Calgary has learned from the 2013 floods

On this day 10 years ago, the water levels reached unfathomable levels in what many people described as a one-in-100-year flood.

Over nine inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours and along with a very extensive snowpack and high water levels in the nearby rivers, it made for the perfect storm.

Frank Frigo, manager of environmental management for Calgary says the city felt prepared at the time but even then, the water was too much to handle

“Prior to 2013, our citizens, our politicians had grown somewhat comfortable with the fact the Bow River had not flooded for many years in a severe way,” he explained. “So, in a lot of ways, 2013 brought us back to an understanding of where we sit within nature and had us rethink where we were at.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on mitigation efforts since 2013, which has given the city the tools to prevent a disaster on that scale from happening again.

“We’ve absolutely taken the learnings from 2013 and utilized all the information we had from 2013, including all the devastating economic and environmental impacts to understand better how to put together a resilience plan in the face of a changing climate that means a shifting hydrology for the Bow and Elbow river basins,” Frigo said.

Despite all the mitigations that have been done, there are many people who still carry a lot of trauma, according to disaster researcher Timothy Haney.

He has spent the last 10 years interviewing Calgarians in the hardest hit communities.

Read more: From the ruins: Calgary artist found inspiration in wake of 2013 floods

“For a lot of people it was definitely financially ruinous, by enlarge though, they talked about the strength of their community being something that brought them together,” he explained. “For many people, especially those who were severely impacted by the flood, it helped bring them back together as a community because it was the situations of need, leaning on each other for support, that was really crucial for them.”

Haney says the trauma brought Albertans closer together.

“There were all sorts of connections that happened between people who’d been through the 2013 floods who then reached out and connected with people who were going through the 2016 Fort McMurray fire because there’s almost a disaster solidarity that happens where it’s like we went through different events in different places but there is a common lived experience and we can help people through that common lived experience and I think that’s a beautiful thing,” he said.

His memories of the flood go a lot further than just speaking Calgarians.

The researcher’s wife was pregnant at this time 10 years ago and she was unable to get to a hospital.

As a result, Haney’s son was born at home with the help of two midwives.

He says it gave him a different perspective going into father hood, further shaping the impact Mother Nature could have on his day-to-day life.

And now, a decade later, Haney says the trauma for some is still very clear.

“Things just didn’t seem right and they didn’t seem the same and things seemed off,” he said. “People’s realities had been disrupted and when we talked to and interviewed Calgarians I got that from a lot of people, where they said ‘Things are not back to normal and they don’t feel right and I’m sort of waiting for things to get back to normal.'”