CALGARY- With the spring melt now underway, the race is on to shore up riverbanks and finish flood mitigation projects, in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the devastating June 2013 flood.
The rebuild is underway in hard hit inner-city communities like Roxboro, where residents are keeping a close eye on river levels.
“People are really nervous, the level of anxiety has increased significantly,” says Emma Grace May, from Flooded River Communities which has nearly 1,000 members. “We are seeing lots of e-mails from people who are wondering what is happening in terms of some of the larger scale projects that we still need to have happen…so we don’t flood the whole downtown core of the city of Calgary again.”
To try and alleviate some stress, the Alberta River Forecasting Centre has launched a new automatic rainfall intensity alarm system, which will alert officials about a rapid increase in water levels. A smart phone app is also being developed to provide stream flow and river basin advisory data.
The 2013 flood displaced more than 100,000 people in Calgary, and damaged 14,000 homes.
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