Flood

I don’t want to write a lot about the flooding that happened here, because the news already took care of that better than I ever could. I just wanted to share some pictures that I took of the river on my regular dog walk route.

This first one is at the end of a boardwalk. Usually I would walk down those steps and walk along the river… but as you can see the river took out the steps and the bank.

If you imagine looking up and to the right from that view, you’d see this next one, which I think is very beautiful. I know its hard to picture, but if you can imagine for a second… the trees over there are usually standing on dry land, and not surrounded by water.  This is a view of someone’s house and backyard, drowning beneath the current.

I took this next one from higher ground (actually on Friday). It’s basically the same area as the above picture, but you can see a little bit of the house as it peaks up screaming “save me!”.  Unfortunately, that’s just the risk you take having a house on the water… in fairness I don’t think anyone ever predicted this sort of flooding would happen here… ever.

The dogs were perplexed as to why the river was overtaking their usual route.  This path is actually quite far away from where the water usually starts.

These next trees stand on an island… I’m hoping the deer that usually hang out there found a safe place to go.  That’s Canada Olympic Park in the background.

And one last shot for good measure. There’s a nice walking path somewhere underneath that bridge in the distance.

Anyways, this is a big inconvenience for the city since there was so much flooding downtown. I don’t know how they’ll manage, or if it’s even possible, to sort out the mess that is the stampede grounds/Saddledome before Stampede is supposed to start.

It’s terrible, of course, for anyone whose home was flooded. Many of my friends were in evacuation zones, and I know a good number who did get some pretty bad flooding.. and it sucks. Big time. But! At the end of the day, it could have been a lot worse. People are safe and already preparing to clean up this silly mess.

I myself was fortunate enough to avoid any damage even though I’m not far from the river. And my work has been cancelled for the immediate future due to being completely flooded, also.

So I’ll be spending next week helping friends out with their clean up! Right now all anyone can do is wait patiently (impatiently) for the water to go away. I think everyone is in good spirits, though. I’ve seen nothing but helpful and positive messages from people preparing/organising clean up efforts.

Just gotta stay positive and do what must be done!