Thoughts on the Floods

June 21, 2013

So, here’s the perspective that I’m carrying with me today. In 2005, right before I moved back to Calgary, I was living in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida when Hurricane Wilma hit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Wilma

By the time it got to me, Wilma was a weak Category 2/strong Category 1. This was not long after Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast at a Category 5.

There’s a lot of differences that stand out to me between now and then:

There wasn’t much of a storm here in Calgary. It’s just been long, constant rain, largely upstream. There’s none of the wind, lightning, thunder, or tornadoes. The rain hasn’t even been as intense, even if it’s been more voluminous.
There’s not a pervasive sense of fear throughout the city, especially prior to the disaster. (Hurricanes give you about 3 days to watch, prep, and stew in your own apprehension.) We’re shocked at the damage, but that’s got a different character to it. Also, it’s a very unusual event; if it wasn’t for the 2005 floods it’d be unprecedented.
We didn’t have to board up any
So far, there have been no confirmed deaths in Calgary; last I heard there was one person missing. Wilma caused 5 direct and 26 indirect deaths in Florida. (There were a lot more in the rest of the Caribbean & Gulf of Mexico.)
The damage is localized to downtown and the areas along the rivers (including the towns along the rivers, who have been really hurt). Up here in the higher parts of town (which is the large majority of Calgary) there’s little impact.
About 100,000 people have been evacuated or otherwise directly affected in Calgary. Wilma cause power loss, property damage, and/or home disruption for about 6 million.
If we really needed to, we could do a mass evacuation of the city via the highways out of town to safer areas. Highways to the south and west aren’t doing so well, but north and east seem to be fine. Florida is two 300-mile strips of metropolis sandwiched between the swamps and the water. There’s nowhere to go but north, and you have to drive a long time (under ideal traffic) before you get to real safety.
My power was out for 11 days after Wilma; there was pretty much no power anywhere for at least 3-4 days. We used up as much frozen food as we could but lost a bunch. Grocery stores lost their perishables too, and useful non-perishables got were bought up before the storm even hit.
Gasoline was nearly impossible to find. Even the gas stations that had fuel couldn’t pump it because their power was out. Gas was almost the only energy source, and it was in even more demand as people tried to power their generators with it.
The National Guard had a distribution point in my area for water and ice. I was stocked so I didn’t need it, but when I drove by, I saw a line of cars that stretched for about 10 miles.
There were tree branches lying everywhere. Granted, these were palm fronds… they’re not half as tough as the woody branches we have on our trees. But it sure looks a lot more disaster-ish when there’s vegetation strewn on every street you can see.
Traffic lights were completely nonfunctional for a week. About half of them were ripped from their poles and wires entirely. Fun fact: a traffic light is about 5 feet high and looks huge when they’re on the ground in front of you.
It took about 8 months to get my roof fully repaired. It ended up delaying my house closing by about a week.
Then, as now, people really pulled together to help out their neighbours. To me, it was more noticeable (and somewhat surreal) down in Florida. Here in Calgary, people are generally friendly to each other all the time… not just after a disaster strikes.

All in all… this flood in Calgary is a bad thing, and people are suffering because of it. But this is some of the worst trouble we’ve faced, and we’re still doing OK for the most part. I’m very glad to live here.