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Floods and worry, Medicine Hat has seen its share over the years and the News has been there along the way.
The Medicine Hat News is reprinting coverage of major events from the city and region as its 140th anniversary nears this fall.
Major floods in 1995 and 2013 are still top of mind and maybe don’t qualify as “old news,” but deserve significant space in the story of Medicine Hat.
Reports of mud in the Arena, the threat to bridges, homes and the city’s power plant filled entire sections of June editions in those years.
Moving books out of the lower level of the Public Library, barricading the city hall parkade and the worry of home owners as they left their homes to high water and fate.
A 1995 flood in early June is still considered a record, while the 2013 is the most damaging.
The return, the recovery process and efforts to avoid such disasters in the future filled the News pages for months and years afterwards, but they were not the only high-water events in the city’s annuls.
Further back in history ice jams swamped low-laying areas along both the river and south flats, while suddenly raging creeks swamped areas of Cypress County and areas of the city, most recently in 2010 and 2012.
Early editions of the News describe volunteer brigades armed with axes to clear ice at the city’s power complex near Kipling Street.
In 1951, water rose 10 feet in hours on March 29 after ice jams downstream backed up water across the Flats, and the province ordered a bombing raid to clear the river.
In “Operation Wet Hat” a pair of Mustang fighters and a Mitchell bomber dropped eight 500-pound bombs and 1,000-pounder on the floes, but to little effect. Eventually sappers began gaining progress with more targeted blasts.
