Hatters look out from Scholten Hill as floodwaters cover an area of the Flats and across Industrial Avenue in this June 23, 2013 file photo.--NEWS FILE PHOTo
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Downtown Calgary was already underwater and the prediction for Medicine Hat was dire on June 22, 2013.
Flood waters barrelling down the South Saskatchewan River could well exceed any previous high water mark in the city, according to provincial flood forecasters.
But with river monitoring equipment knocked off line as rain from an historic storm in the Rockies rolled down, the number kept changing.
Minor flooding predicted June 20 (a Wednesday) was raised the next day to a peak volume passing through at 25 per cent more than the record flood of 1995.
It set off four days of flood preparations envisioned in the city’s standing disaster response plans. Once the river crested just below 1995 levels in the early morning of June 24, months of cleanup ensued, and years of berm building to prevent a repeat began.
About 500 homes were badly damaged, and dozens were eventually bought up by a city-provincial relocation program.
The cost to the city infrastructure was above $40 million, and council embarked on a $30-million program to erect permanent berms in low-laying areas.
Stan Schwartzenberger was the city’s recently hired manager of planning at the time of the flood. While house hunting months earlier he’d been drawn to the beauty of the river valley.
“I never thought I’d see that that much water in it,” he told the News on Thursday, 10 years after he quickly gathered possessions from the house he rented in the Flats and began long shifts at the city’s emergency operations centre in Brier Park.
“I remember driving down Maple Avenue and seeing all the businesses sandbagged,” said Schwartzenberger, noting the remarkable distance from the river. “But that’s what we were preparing for … It would have a been a catastrophe.”
A prediction that river flow could reach 6,000 cubic metres per second would place water a block north of St. Patrick’s Church in Riverside, up to Second Street downtown, and nearly the length of Kingsway Avenue and Maple Avenue.
More than 2,000 evacuation notices were issued in the Flats, Riverside and Harlow, with residents directed to stay with friends or a shelter set up at Medicine Hat College.
Temporary berms were erected in residential areas, though breaches occurred when water reached its highest point shortly after midnight on the Monday morning.
“It’s quite tragic in some areas,” said then director of emergency response Ron Robinson at the time.
The expected water levels would deluge not only The Arena and Athletic Park, as they eventually did, but also swamp the Second Street police station and cut off the Maple Avenue fire station.
That amount of water would likely top the decks of three bridges, cut off the city’s power plant, threaten the water treatment plant. Berms there held.
Merrick Brown, the city’s current emergency management director, was a private sector consultant in the city at the time. Living in the far south of the city, he wasn’t worried about his own property, but knew the potential for wider disaster was real.
“I remember filling up my bathtub with water just in case,” Brown recalled this month. “I mean, we weren’t supposed to, but I remember that. It didn’t occur, but I remember thinking about that.”
At the time the city response was led off a standing mitigation plan developed by Robinson, which both Schwartzenberger and Brown called advanced for its time, and substantial.
Both men helped update plans afterwards, both surging ahead with permanent berm plans afterward and annual training and tweaks of the operational response.
“Floods are low frequency but have incredibly large consequences,” said Brown. “The better prepared you are, the shorter the recovery afterwards.”
Limiting damage was key in 2013. The CP Rail yard was emptied. Shaw Communications ringed its South Flats location with concrete blocks, but also moved a temporary service centre to a church parking lot on the Southeast Hill. There was concern TV and internet service could be cut off throughout in the city.
City bridges closed to all but emergency vehicles, and excavators knocked debris off bridge supports from above. HALO air rescue stationed its helicopter near a makeshift military hospital set up at the Family Leisure Centre in case of emergency transport to Medicine Hat Regional Hospital.
“There was such collaboration among agencies,” said Schwartzenberger. “But also of neighbours helping neighbours, no matter what their own circumstances were. We all pulled together as a community to help each other out.”
Evacuated residents in the hardest hit sections of the Flats were allowed to return at the beginning of the Canada Day long weekend.
Barricades also came down at city hall, where the integrity of the parkade was a top concern. It housed servers that controlled mapping systems and communications between city crews and managers.
Andy McGrogan, now a city councillor, was police chief at the time, and said the biggest concern with the police department was its records management systems.
In the lead-up to the flood, IT workers cleared out a box store of cables and computer accessories to move police operations to the city’s garbage truck maintenance garage in the Southwest Industrial park.
“It was tight, but it worked,” McGrogan said Thursday, noting a sense of camaraderie – that “we were all in the same boat” – developed with his officers and throughout the city’s response and even larger community as well.
“To some degree I thought it also brought everyone together. We were shoulder to shoulder.”
