City prepping for flood despite no threat
By COLLIN GALLANT on May 1, 2020.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant Flood prep in Medicine Hat will be jumpstarted even though there is no current threat, officials said this week. Ice jams in northern Alberta damaged 1,000 buildings this week in Fort McMurray, where 14,000 residents are evacuated, the province reported on Thursday. That situation is lessening however, as ice begins to melt and break up, said provincial officials who still say that a late spring flood season in southern Alberta is still too far off to accurately predict. Still, the spectre of high water on the South Saskatchewan River or overland flooding in the region is weighing heavy on local emergency planners who announced last week they are updating response plans to account for COVID-19 health restrictions. “Our flood response, in a non-COVID time, is enacted in a fairly short amount of time,” Merrick Brown, the city’s director of emergency management, on Tuesday. “Given the fact that we’ll need more time to (maintain social distance of crews) there will be some pre-emptive measures. In the coming weeks, we’ll start filling sandbags, deploying temporary measures (like flood walls) and assembling them in various locations. “Should we determine a flood threat is real … we would move to finalize … assembly and constructing flood walls.” Essentially, said Brown, work done soon will reduce the time required to complete flood walls later, meaning the final phases can be accomplished more quickly. Officials with the Alberta emergency operations centre said that this year they contacted officials across the province as usual in January about the coming fire and flood seasons. Since March, that agency has communicated the need for cities, towns and counties to fold considerations of coronavirus protocols into emergency management plans. “It’s added a level of difficulty,” Environment Minister Jason Nixon told reporters during a mid-day update about the situation in Fort McMurray. Specific to Medicine Hat’s standing plans to react to emergencies, Brown said the city would likely not depend on group housing of individuals if evacuation orders come into effect this summer, but rather consider hotel settings, or asking affected residents to shelter with friends or families. As well, local planners were evaluating how to best conduct registration and other activities that previously required in-person meetings. In 2013, near record levels on the South Saskatchewan River forced the evacuation of nearly 2,000 addresses in Medicine Hat and badly damaged 500 homes. Since then the city has erected more than six kilometres of berms at points along the river high enough to withstand 2013 river levels with one-metre of leeway. Several portions however, such as a second phase of a Harlow berm and the final section of flood defence near Industrial Avenue are incomplete. Municipal works officials have said in the past that since permanent berms have reduced potential at risk areas, they are better equipped to fill in gaps. 17-16
