One year ago, I was glued to my TV watching the June 2013 flood destroy southern Alberta.
I’ll never forget the images of people in Canmore watching helplessly as their homes washed away down the Bow River and residents in High River stuck on their rooftops, but it all still seemed unreal.
I had just accepted the position here at Rocky View Publishing with a start date of July 1, 2013, and was scrambling to plan alternate routes, as Highway 1 through Canmore and Banff was washed away.
Driving through Canmore just a week after the flood destroyed the town, the devastation was of a greater magnitude than I could have imagined.
It was overwhelming just driving through, I couldn’t imagine watching it unveil in front on me.
As I drove through Canmore, I pledged to do what I could to help out, wherever I was needed.
I was settle in Airdrie for two weeks before I drove down to High River to register to help with the clean up efforts.
The condition of High River rocked me to my core, I’d never seen devastation on that scale. There were cars in trees, calls for help spray painted on the sides of what was left of people homes, families trying to salvage anything they could from the mud, police and firefighters helping people and collapsed bridges.
Stray, hungry looking pets walked aimlessly throughout the town, gravel and debris from the river was everywhere.
But what was incredible, was the amount of orange vests, the number of people who came together to help, that was more overwhelming.
Schools buses taxied volunteers to people’s homes, where they were given a mask, boots, a shovel and told to do as much as you could.
I was sent to a home in the east side of High River along with couple from Saskatoon, who took their annual vacation to come and help.
We were sent to the home of a couple well in their 80s whose property was covered under metres of mud, sewage, and debris.
They were some of the lucky ones – if there were any – that survived by climbing out of their bedroom window to get to the roof.
Firefighters rescued them a day later, but their basement and first floor of their home was destroyed, along with everything they owned.
We shoveled for hours and it didn’t seem like we made a dent in the mud.
From basically, sun-up until sun-down the three of us worked two days straight to clear that property, and we did it in the end. But that was just one house, in one area, all our hard work that weekend really put the situation into perceptive for me, there was so much to do.
Over the next four weeks, we cleared another five homes.
Looking at High River, Canmore, Bragg Creek, Calgary and the Stoney, Siksika and Morley reserves now, so much has been done, and the full-time volunteers, public servants and residents have so much to be proud of.
What seemed at the time to be a complete loss, has turned into one of the most powerful stories of strength and community-spirit this province or county has seen in a long time.
