- 6 months ago
In 2013, relentless torrential rains in Alberta, Canada, unleash one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in the province's history — a deluge that would come to be known as the “Flood of Floods.” Rivers overflow, entire neighborhoods are submerged, and over 100,000 people are forced to flee their homes as the sheer speed and force of the rising waters take communities completely by surprise. It is a disaster that tests emergency response systems and leaves behind billions in damages.
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00:00I looked down, the river was racing below our living room window.
00:06That's when I really went into a panic.
00:09Oh my God.
00:10Within a couple of hours, it went from nothing to four feet of water.
00:14This storm system was stalled right over us.
00:16When was it going to end?
00:18We're in front of a dam, and they were very concerned that if they didn't release the water, it was going to break.
00:23I'm up on the roof, all of a sudden, down the main street comes this big, dirty, filthy dump truck.
00:28It looked like our way out.
00:34As temperatures rise all around the globe, natural disasters are becoming more violent and more frequent.
00:43Extreme weather survivors have captured the intensity and the magnitude of these events.
00:50These are the first-hand accounts of a planet going rogue.
00:53On Wednesday, June 19, 2013, torrential rains triggered the worst flood in Alberta's history.
01:05It became known as the Flood of Floods.
01:07There it is.
01:08There it is.
01:11Over 100,000 people are forced out of their homes, and five lives are lost.
01:19The destructive power and speed of the flood waters caught everyone by surprise, including meteorologist David Spence.
01:26I had no idea the enormity of what was to come.
01:30Sure, we saw heavy rain coming, but the full consequences of that heavy rain, I don't think we realized at that point.
01:36Well, it's a little bit of lightning going on close by.
01:38It's not directly over me.
01:40Almost over me.
01:41Look at the snow.
01:43Up in the Rocky Mountains, layers of snow that have accumulated over a long, hard winter are still melting.
01:50Somewhere just south of Canmore, and it is just breaking, storming out here.
01:55It's raining like crazy.
01:56All the little creeks are swelling up.
01:57You can see on the roadside there, all the little ditches are, you know, mudding up with water.
02:03The runoff from the melting snow pours into Cougar Creek in Canmore, where John Marriott lives.
02:11It was just incredible.
02:12There was all of a sudden water in there, you know, a couple feet worth of water in there.
02:16And we were quite excited, thinking, wow, you know, never seen Cougar Creek actually flowing before.
02:20So, took a couple of videos and went to bed and didn't really think anything else of it.
02:27What John doesn't know is that southern Alberta is about to get slammed by a perfect storm of powerful and diverse weather systems.
02:36June 13th, I noticed that there was a big low pressure system in the Pacific, off the west coast.
02:41And these things develop all the time.
02:43But this one was just hanging out there.
02:45And it stayed out there for several days.
02:48And then it made a connection with the jet stream and started to move through the east.
02:52And then it hits terrain.
02:53It hits the foothills and the mountains.
02:55And that causes the air to move up.
02:58Added to that, we had something called an atmospheric river.
03:01That atmospheric river drew some moisture all the way from the Gulf of Mexico, connecting with this circulation.
03:08And it's just like the low pressure system itself.
03:10When that moisture goes up the slope, it rises, cools, condenses and generates even more rainfall.
03:16Good morning.
03:17Rob Murray here.
03:18A local state of emergency has been declared in Canmore.
03:19Sorry.
03:20Give me a second to catch my breath.
03:21I was right upstairs.
03:22Whew.
03:23I got dressed really quickly, ran out the door and got to the radio station, ran up the stairs, turned on the microphone and breathly just started saying, state of emergency, here we go.
03:42Canmore, Alberta, located about 100 kilometers west of Calgary, sits at the edge of the Banff National Park in the Rockies.
03:52The town, elevation about 1,400 meters, is home to over 13,000 residents.
03:58Banks and Cougar Creek are unstable.
04:01Please stay away from Cougar Creek.
04:03Instead of the creek being 50 yards away from us, suddenly it was 10 yards away from our, it was almost right at our fence line.
04:13And we all of a sudden realized, holy cow, this is serious.
04:16It was a bit surreal because we're looking at the creek and we're trying to decide, you know, how fast is it eating away at these banks?
04:23How much time do we have?
04:25The runoff that was starting to occur in the mountains was already affecting towns in the mountains, in the foothills.
04:31Towns like Canmore, where Cougar Creek, which is normally a pretty dry stream bed, all of a sudden is full of water and property is getting destroyed.
04:40I cannot believe this, man.
04:43This is insane.
04:44And then sort of 7.38, things really started taking a turn for the worse and it started eating away into our backyard.
04:51I put in a call to my insurance company at 8 a.m. and they phoned me back at 8.01, you know, as soon as they opened and said, you're actually not covered under insurance.
05:06This is unbelievable devastation.
05:09I cannot believe it.
05:12These houses are all screwed.
05:15I remember this moment.
05:16I walked into my living room and I looked down and right below me, the river was racing, literally below our living room window.
05:26And I thought, I got to get out of here. I should not be standing here. That's when I think we both really went into a panic.
05:33You know, we thought we were going to lose our house at that point.
05:36And I just turned around and walked straight out of the house.
05:40Our planet is in turmoil.
05:43And I'm watching it with my own eyes.
05:45Like this is a hundred year flood.
05:46This stuff doesn't happen.
05:47This is just unbelievable.
05:49I cannot believe it.
05:50It is flowing like crazy.
05:53There is some major erosion on the banks.
05:56And wow, I've never seen it blowing like this before.
05:59So again, the town of Canmore has declared a state of local emergency.
06:06The first call I made was to my wife.
06:08Like you have to leave.
06:09You have to go now, pack up a bag, get the dog, the cat, our two year old child at the time and just go.
06:17It was absolutely pouring rain.
06:20Not only was Cougar Creek flowing, but pretty much any mountain creek around here were raging torrents that were carving a path of destruction through roads, highways, anything in their path.
06:34Highway 40 in Kananaskis closed in a couple of sections.
06:37North end of Kananaskis village, another south end at Fortress Junction.
06:43Oh no.
06:44This is no good.
06:45I don't even think we can get into the town.
06:48Toronto-based Nick Savarna and his business partner, Tim Rydell, are driving to Banff for work.
06:54While we were near Canmore, we started to notice water going over the highway, torrential downpour.
07:00It was ripping down trees, bringing trees along the side, and it's actually going to wash it out.
07:05It doesn't look too good.
07:07Oh no.
07:08We came up to a wall of vehicles, and we were told to get off the highway because it was about to be washed out.
07:22Apparently there's a huge slide.
07:26He doesn't know whether the slide was west of Banff, but he says we can try going up here and cutting across and taking highway 40.
07:33But he says it might be closed too.
07:38All the bridges are blown out.
07:40There's bulldozers in the creek beds trying to widen them so that the water has somewhere to funnel through.
07:45And there's still water literally just pumping out of these mountains like a broken faucet.
07:49Banff and Canmore are situated near the top of the Bow River Basin.
07:56The Bow River usually runs across the slopes of the Rockies, through Calgary, and drops down, running almost all the way to Medicine Hat.
08:05But now the water flow is growing so quickly, it's spilling over its banks and is beginning to destroy the Trans-Canada Highway,
08:12the main road connecting the communities of southern Alberta.
08:16The Trans-Canada currently closed both east and westbound at Cougar Creek.
08:21The town of Canmore has declared a state of local emergency.
08:25Hey, how do we get back to Calgary?
08:28At this point you don't.
08:29The road's closed?
08:30Yeah.
08:31Oh.
08:32Yeah.
08:33At this point we're kind of stuck and we've got a couple of washouts at this end we're working on trying to clear it up.
08:39So at this point you can't.
08:40So the only place basically we can go is back in there?
08:42Yeah.
08:43Yeah.
08:44So at this point we can neither go back to Calgary nor go on to Banff.
08:54Right now we're heading towards Cougar Creek.
08:56It's still raining.
08:57Very hard.
08:58It doesn't appear that it's going to stop any time soon.
09:03This is the first natural disaster that I've experienced and it was just really hard to feel stuck in one place.
09:10You're just under Mother Nature and under her will and you just have to take it.
09:16The highways are washed out.
09:19People cannot get in or out of town and we don't know how bad this is going to get.
09:25And that's exactly what David Spence is trying to predict.
09:29David Spence is in our Skywatch Weather Center.
09:32David, more rain on the way but where does it stand right now?
09:34The heaviest rain still to come will be in the area that least needs it.
09:38So that would be the Canmore Bowl Valley region.
09:41In the news broadcast they can tell you what's happening and what has happened.
09:44It's my job to tell you what's going to happen.
09:47And when you have a weather event like this and you know that you've already missed a lot of the impact by forecasting a third of the rain that's going to fall.
09:57You're concentrating really hard and working really hard to get it right and make sure the information from there on in is correct, accurate, saves property and saves lives.
10:06Before the Bow River monitoring gauges blew out, they recorded peak flow rates of about 1,000 cubic meters of water per second.
10:15Now the water is flowing into adjacent rivers, including the Highwood River.
10:20And that river just happens to take some of its twists and turns right through the town of High River.
10:26So water wants to flow in a straight line, but if your riverbank is turning, the water is going to go over the riverbank and into the town.
10:33This is an Alberta emergency alert. Highwood River has caused serious flooding in High River.
10:40If you are in the affected area, evacuate immediately.
10:44Oh my God.
10:47A mandatory evacuation is ordered.
10:50But for many High River residents, including Jonathan Reimer, his sister and his dad,
10:55it's too late.
10:57There is a mandatory evacuation and we get into the truck.
11:01And at that point, the water is already half a foot up the tires.
11:07We were driving and we heard of lots of cars stalling and people having to escape and get onto their roofs.
11:13And the water was rushing in fast.
11:16Uh-oh.
11:17No pressure.
11:18Yeah.
11:19This is getting deep.
11:20I don't want to be stranded in a vehicle.
11:22It was just like the muddiest water you've ever seen and it was everywhere.
11:31If you've ever seen a really, really dirty river, that's what it looked like.
11:35Except it was everywhere. As far as the eye could see water.
11:39And downtown at the Sobeys grocery store where Jen Keyes just started her shift, the situation is no better.
11:48Everywhere you look there's water and it's fast.
11:51Like it's not just slowly seeping in water. This water's coming fast.
11:58Within a couple of hours it went from nothing to four feet of water.
12:03It's just coming and coming and coming and there's just no end to it.
12:07We're watching our vehicles in the parking lot. The water get higher and higher.
12:12By that time the water in the parking lot was at least hip level.
12:16So we kind of did what we could to barricade the front door.
12:21But when the water starts pouring in, they know they're in trouble.
12:26It was scary. It was surreal. It was, I don't know, so many emotions.
12:31Everybody was speechless. What do you say?
12:41On June 20th, 2013, the flood of floods is turning large parts of southern Alberta into a disaster zone.
12:48This is unbelievable devastation.
12:51Overflowing rivers rush down the slopes of the Rockies,
12:54destroying critical infrastructure and thousands of homes.
12:58And for Jonathan Reimer and his family, there seems to be no way out of High River.
13:03That's blocked off out there.
13:06Yeah, I don't think we're going anywhere.
13:09By the time we were done driving in circles, it was another half foot up.
13:13Yeah.
13:14And for every minute we were out there, it had gone up another two or three centimeters.
13:20Yeah, I think we should turn back while we still can.
13:23As we were driving, none of us felt right to continue forward.
13:27And there were lots of other vehicles out there trying to get away.
13:30And it just didn't feel right that we would continue on.
13:33And so we turned around.
13:36Yeah.
13:37We're stuck.
13:38Center Avenue, right near 3rd Street Northwest, is completely taken over by the river.
13:43There's a lot of water here, and it's still coming.
13:45It's still getting higher.
13:46If you're in High River, you know, get out.
13:48Holy cow.
13:50Powerless in the grips of such a deluge, the residents' only refuge is on top of their roofs.
13:59Water's pushing four feet up the doorway, and each side coming through.
14:04I scramble up the stairs, and now I'm up on the roof, and here we are standing now looking over the town that's completely gone.
14:11That is crazy.
14:13We went upstairs.
14:15We didn't know if somebody was coming to get us or what was going on.
14:19Good morning, The Eagle.
14:20Oh, this is Sonia calling from High River.
14:22Oh, hi.
14:23Our town is in a complete panic of a state.
14:28With such a late warning, High River residents are in shock.
14:32It seemed no one had seen this coming.
14:37In the mountains where the High Wood River starts, that was the area of the greatest rainfall.
14:42That was the area where they had 300 millimeters of rain, and all that came down the High Wood and had nowhere to go but flood the town.
14:48First responders and other members of the community initiate search and rescue operations for the 13,400 residents and visitors in the town, 150 of them from rooftops.
15:01There was people getting rescued from other businesses around and stuff, and they were rescuing them in like dump trucks and front-end loaders and whatever they could, right?
15:14They were going to realize we're not getting down.
15:16There's nowhere to go.
15:17And all of a sudden, just like the cavalry coming, this big dump truck comes down the street, plowing through the water.
15:23It looked like our way out.
15:27Everyone was dirty and muddy and wet, but we know we're getting out of there.
15:35Jeez, eh?
15:36This wasn't in the plans this morning.
15:39We tried to flag people down, and we actually caught the attention of a manure truck that was going down the streets as well.
15:51So they were waving at us, so we climbed down.
15:56I'm seeing windows knocked out of buildings.
15:58It's complete shambles.
16:00There's people sitting in their stores on their counters waiting to get out because they couldn't get out the doors.
16:06The pressure of the water was too hard to get out.
16:08Well, there's somebody upstairs there.
16:15I don't know where higher ground is.
16:18All of the stores, there's water in them.
16:21The manure truck is still picking up more people.
16:24And there's brand new SUVs that you can just watch the water as it fills the interiors.
16:30And we realized this is really bad.
16:33And then we heard helicopters.
16:45Somebody went out and we flagged the helicopter down to let them know that we were in the store.
16:52And then we started sending people to the back to go up the roof.
17:03Well, I'm in the helicopter and I'm looking out the window and I see dirty water everywhere.
17:09That's all you see.
17:10And there's no, there's no definition.
17:12I don't see vehicles.
17:13I'm not seeing roads.
17:15I don't see sidewalks.
17:16I don't see parks.
17:17I just see, everywhere I look, I just see water.
17:19And I see water rushing where water shouldn't be.
17:24That's when I think to myself, holy crap, like this is, this is crazy.
17:30This is bad.
17:31But it was about to get a lot worse.
17:38People were losing their property.
17:42People were losing their homes to flooding.
17:44Some people have lost their lives by this point.
17:46When was it going to end?
17:48When the low pressure system that originated in the Pacific moved into northern Montana and up into southern Alberta,
17:57it was blocked by a high pressure system to the north.
18:00Meteorologists call this phenomenon a rex block.
18:04It just kept dumping moisture, tons of moisture on southern Alberta.
18:11I mean, this storm system was stalled right over us.
18:13When was it going to move out?
18:15This is when I first realized the rain is not going to stop any time soon and that this flood is going to intensify and that it was going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
18:26I knew, you know, this is more than a Canmore story.
18:28This is going to be a Calgary story as well because these rivers do flow fast and it wasn't going to take very long for the flood waters that were in Canmore to reach Calgary.
18:39Calgary is one of Canada's largest cities.
18:42Once nicknamed Cowtown by cattle farmers and cowpokes, Calgary exploded during the oil boom of the 1970s.
18:50Today, Calgary is a cosmopolitan city of skyscrapers and industry with a population of over a million.
18:58But Cowtown still celebrates its roots every July with the massive Calgary Stampede.
19:04Downtown is a very low-lying area.
19:08We have Mission District, the Stampede grounds, all very close to the Elbow River.
19:13Now, many of the people living in those areas had also been through earlier flooding.
19:17There was a flood in 2005.
19:19And I was hoping they weren't thinking this was going to be another 2005 because this was going to be much worse.
19:24The flood of 2005 destroyed 40,000 homes in the city and this was expected to be worse.
19:31The water coming under the Bow River Bridge raising pretty high right now.
19:36Soon this will be all underwater.
19:38Yeah, this is insane.
19:44On June 20th, 2013, Alberta's super flood devastated one quarter of the province.
19:50These houses are all screwed.
19:52Torrential rains, melting snow and overflowing rivers force Southern Alberta to declare a state of local emergency in nine different localities.
20:05And as a raging river of angry flood waters rushes towards Calgary, John Marriott in Canmore wonders if his house will survive.
20:13We are going to stay here. We feel it's safer for us here than going downtown and being just part of the chaos down there.
20:19You know, it kind of also allowed us to keep watching our house a bit, which we were concerned about.
20:25We kind of wanted to be there if it went.
20:27It's still raining and I can still sort of see through the cracks between the houses that the river is still going pretty strongly.
20:34And it's right against this side running up against all of our houses.
20:39We were able to get some news out to people, both family and friends.
20:43A person up the street ended up getting us to go up to their house.
20:46And we went up there and took some stuff out of their safe that they did not want to lose.
20:51Back to our top story now and major flooding across Southern Alberta tonight.
20:54Mandatory evacuations in some communities.
20:58David's been standing by in our Skywatch weather center.
21:00By the time we got to the five o'clock broadcast, we had reports coming in from all over Southern Alberta.
21:05If you are in this area, you're in for a lot more rainfall. The rainfall warning is still in effect.
21:10As the Bow River overflows, rushing high waters tear through many small communities and resort villages on its banks.
21:18Including Kananaskis, Wypris Lake and Bragg Creek, population 454.
21:25And everyone knows Calgary is next.
21:28The Bow is in a fairly steep valley.
21:31Much of the city, thankfully, is well above the level that the Bow River would ever flood.
21:37But downtown Calgary, some of the older parts of the city, very vulnerable to flooding.
21:41Low-lying neighborhoods near the Bow and Elbow Rivers are under mandatory evacuation.
21:47Doug Griffiths is in charge of emergency management.
21:51I was thinking the most important message we're going to need to get out is that people need to comply with the request to evacuate.
21:58It's saving lives that's the most important part in those first few hours.
22:02As a last resort, authorities reach out to the companies overseeing the hydroelectric dams along the river.
22:09There's 11 dams along the Bow River.
22:13And so the concept was let's just catch more of the water as it comes flowing through.
22:18Except they are retention dams, not detention dams.
22:22Detention dams relocate water.
22:25But retention dams hold water on a more permanent basis.
22:29Now they're filled to the brim.
22:32And engineers need to decide if they can hold the water or release it.
22:36Here we are with the flood coming and there's no easy decision.
22:40If you let water go, you save the dam.
22:42But the devastation could be magnitudes much worse downstream.
22:46But if you hold it and the dam breaks, you amplify it even further.
22:51My concern at that time was, is the Ghost Lake Dam going to hold this water?
22:56Is the Ghost Lake Dam going to prevent flooding in Calgary?
23:00I didn't know, because it's not a huge dam.
23:05The Ghost Lake Dam is the closest dam upriver from Calgary.
23:09It's a hydroelectric dam, generating about 51 megawatts of electricity a year.
23:14Enough to power over 60,000 homes.
23:18The engineers shut the gates and halt the water.
23:21With the Bow River gushing at a rate of 2300 cubic meters of water per second,
23:26the reservoir is now full.
23:28And engineers have no choice but to release some water onto the spillways.
23:39This is an Alberta emergency alert.
23:42City of Calgary has issued an overland flood alert.
23:45This is a mandatory evacuation. Evacuate immediately.
23:53In Calgary, Colleen Baird is not taking any chances.
23:57They're saying it's going to happen.
23:59The water will rise and cover a good part of the island.
24:02And we need to start moving animals.
24:05The Calgary Zoo was built on an island in the middle of the river.
24:08And it's many residents include large mammals and dangerous predators.
24:15We had tiger cubs.
24:17We had a mom and then another male.
24:20So we had lots of tigers.
24:23So our vet team had to come down and start to anesthetize six tigers.
24:28And it takes time.
24:30We had, you know, lions.
24:33We have snow leopards.
24:34And so we had to immobilize a lot of large cats on that day.
24:38We have to find crates.
24:39We have to catch animals.
24:41We need nets.
24:42We need X amount of crates for these species.
24:45We need so many crates over here.
24:47And as the day was happening, it was going so fast.
24:50And I was like, oh my goodness, this is going to take us way longer than I thought.
24:55As night falls over the province, Colleen is still moving her animals to safety.
25:00Just past one in the morning, she finally gets a chance to take a brief nap.
25:07I'm sleeping on my cot and the phone rang.
25:10It was our facilities director.
25:11And he said, Colleen, what does it look like out there?
25:15I get outside and I see for the first time water and a lot of water.
25:20And while they moved as many animals off the island as they could,
25:23some are still in their enclosures.
25:25We went to the building where the giraffe and hippos are being kept.
25:29And I noticed that the windows broken below the water.
25:32And I was like, oh my goodness.
25:33A hippo could escape here.
25:34A hippo could leave this building and come and share the same space where I am in this boat.
25:43A massive and unrelenting rainfall has swollen the rivers and creeks of southern Alberta.
25:48Torrential runoffs from the Rocky Mountains submerge small towns along the Bow River.
25:57Now downtown Calgary is under attack.
26:00And on the morning of June 21st, Doug Griffiths surveys the damage from the air.
26:05I have never seen so much water in my life.
26:10It was as though there were high-rises popping out of a lake.
26:14You know, I've seen flooding in small communities before.
26:18But to see an entire downtown core of a city under 10, 12 feet of water,
26:24the Saddledome was a third full of water.
26:27It felt apocalyptic.
26:29Downtown is shut down, and I mean shut down.
26:34There is the Saddledome underwater.
26:37Apparently up to 10 rows up are underwater inside.
26:42The Saddledome, home to the NHL's Calgary Flames and the 1988 Winter Olympics,
26:48suffers major damage.
26:50The floodwaters submerge the dressing rooms, the ice plant, ice resurfacing machines,
26:55and the kitchens, and everything on the Saddledome event level.
26:59The nerve center for games and concerts is a total loss.
27:03We were aghast for the first while and in shock.
27:08At the Calgary Zoo, Colleen Baird has moved as many animals off the island as she could.
27:14But the big animals still remain locked in their enclosures.
27:18I couldn't get into the building where the giraffe and hippos are being kept.
27:21So my colleague and I, we went to the back of the building to see if we can look into some of the windows.
27:28And just out of chance, a hippo head appeared in the window.
27:33And I had that wonderful moment where I'm like, oh, thank goodness, the hippo is alive.
27:37And then he goes underwater, and I noticed that the window's broken below the water.
27:42And I felt, at that point, a hippo could escape here.
27:45A hippo could leave this building and come and share the same space where I am in this boat.
27:49As well as being rather large, hippos are also rather aggressive, especially when defending their territory.
27:56At that point, I didn't know where the hippo was, and my colleague and I, we had to act.
28:03This hippo needed to stay in this building.
28:06We had this container full of straw, the metal container.
28:10We were able to get it in position, open the door, sink it, flood it, and secure it in front of that window so that a hippo could not come out that window.
28:20So he was contained and in the building.
28:23At that point, we knew that we were safe, and we knew the hippos were secure.
28:2726 Calgary neighborhoods are under mandatory evacuation.
28:35But a few good neighbors are staying behind and volunteering to help.
28:50It's okay, we should just go.
28:53Roham Palavan and his wife patrol the Rideau community.
28:57When I saw the old lady with a walker up to her waist in water, my heart sank.
29:06Do you need help?
29:09The water was so cold for a young and healthy man.
29:13I couldn't imagine what it was like for her.
29:15And I couldn't imagine even how far she had walked.
29:18Because it was in the middle of the parking lot where I picked her up.
29:23So we brought the first two people to the edge of the shore and we let them out of the truck.
29:28And then we drove back into where I saw another building.
29:32My husband there trying to get my mom out of that building.
29:36She's an 80 some years old lady there.
29:38Can we give her a ride back here?
29:39Sure, of course.
29:40He's right there in the yellow jacket.
29:42Okay.
29:43Don't worry.
29:44We started ferrying people out maybe at around 11, 30 or 12.
29:50Before I knew it, it was 4 p.m.
29:52And we were wet and we were cold.
29:56To make matters even worse, the water is not just coming from up above,
30:00it's also coming up from down below.
30:03It's overflowing here into the street.
30:08One of the major issues that we were facing
30:11was the sewer backing up, clogging streets and into homes.
30:15It became a public health issue.
30:17Every city set up in a very similar way.
30:19The sewer water gets cleaned, it gets drained into the river.
30:21But when the river fills up because of the flood, it backs up.
30:24And then it's got nowhere to go.
30:25And you combine that with the storm water coming into the storm water system
30:28and it meets in the middle and creates massive pressure.
30:31And you wind up with a situation where we had actually heard of manhole covers just flipping off like dimes
30:37because the pressure was so great.
30:40Millions of gallons of sewage.
30:43That is raw sewage.
30:45It stinks.
30:48Kit Kaiser experienced the full destructive power of the water when he checked on his grandparents' house.
30:54The first part was getting into the house, just getting the door open.
31:01Everything's warped at that point.
31:03And you're trying to push in and there's water inside the house.
31:07But then you walk inside and everything that's not attached has moved.
31:13And a big countertop.
31:15It was flipped over and tossed on the floor.
31:19Nice layer of mud everywhere.
31:26The flow of water is unstoppable.
31:28And all the authorities can do is to give residents advance notice of the impending disaster.
31:34There was no way we were going to be able to stop the water that day.
31:38Getting people to safety was the most important aspect.
31:41And it was for those that afternoon that were flooding.
31:44But also to give advance warning to the communities downriver that the flood was still coming to hit.
31:49Look at this.
31:50It is an ocean.
31:51It is an ocean.
31:52It is an ocean.
31:53Now get off this bridge.
31:54Yeah, hurry.
31:56Downstream from Calgary at the bottom of the Bow River Basin,
32:00the people of Medicine Hat know they're sitting directly in the path of the oncoming flood.
32:05And many people, like Damien Voisin, prepare for the worst.
32:10Just a community.
32:11Getting together.
32:13I'm sorry the video is shaky.
32:16That's my hands shaking.
32:17So I've been going steady for the last five hours.
32:21So we're watching on the news this devastation that happened in High River and how Calgary's being affected by this and they're getting hit pretty hard.
32:28So we've come to the realization it's coming here.
32:31We better get ready because, you know, we don't know what's going to happen.
32:35They have no idea how bad it's going to be.
32:37Evacuation order.
32:38So let's get as much done to help people out as we can.
32:44A bunch of people came.
32:46It was great.
32:47Some people were just bringing in coffee and donuts because they couldn't do the physical part.
32:50So that was their part.
32:51And other people were just helping with the filling of the sandbags.
32:54Other people were carting them to where they had to be.
32:57And we were helping one house, the other house.
32:59It didn't matter.
33:00We were just helping each other.
33:02We started sandbagging the front door and then we were doing the basement windows and everything else that we could figure out.
33:08And kind of get it as best as we could and make sure everything was covered around the foundation.
33:14And now we're just plugging up the drains as best we can to prevent from back flowing into the house.
33:23I've read and I've seen, even on the news they were talking about it, where the biggest problem was the sewer backup and people's houses being full of, you know, not very good stuff.
33:34And that's the worst stuff to have to clean up and it does the most damage.
33:38So we got sinks plugged.
33:41Okay.
33:44Oh, we got to do this thing still.
33:46And we got the toilet plugged.
33:48Got a sandbag on the bottom drain.
33:51It might not stop it completely, but might prevent more damage than necessary.
33:56Hopefully, this will be enough.
34:00If it's not enough, then I don't know what to say.
34:06I don't even want to think about it.
34:08With the flood waters speeding towards Medicine Hat, Damien can only hope his work is not in vain.
34:15A torrential rainfall over southern Alberta has triggered the worst flooding in the history of the province.
34:28Our planet is in turmoil.
34:30Like, this is a hundred year flood.
34:32This is just unbelievable.
34:33I cannot believe it.
34:34I cannot believe it.
34:35But there's no denying it.
34:37This flood is a dangerous killer.
34:39Under mandatory evacuation, thousands have already fled their homes.
34:44And the flood waters continue to rise.
34:47Holy cow.
34:48Look at this.
34:49It is an ocean.
34:50Now get off this bridge.
34:51With homes and now critical infrastructure at risk, Doug Griffiths, the Minister of Municipal Affairs in Alberta, calls for reinforcements.
35:02We had the army who had joined us with 2,200 troops.
35:06We had the Alberta Sheriff's Department and the RCMP coordinating for search and rescue.
35:11We had a massive amount of personnel had come together from all sorts of emergency services across the province, which made the rescue efforts very successful.
35:21Helicopters are dispatched, including a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, to help evacuate people stranded by the flood waters.
35:31Emergency operations are in full force when meteorologist David Spence realizes there's a break in the weather system.
35:38At that point, we started to see the storm starting to move.
35:43So not only were we able to go on the air and give people the information they needed,
35:48We also gave them the information they wanted to hear, which was that the storm was finally going to pull out.
35:54Well, the news from the Skywatch Weather Centre is all good this morning.
35:57All the warnings have ended, not only in Alberta, but in all of Canada there are no weather warnings.
36:01So it was kind of a cathartic situation that we were finally able to say,
36:05Hey, this thing's winding down. This thing's coming to an end.
36:09Under sunny skies in Canmore, Nicholas Savarna and his business partner, Tim Rydell, are on the move.
36:16They got a tip that one side of the Trans-Canada Highway had been opened,
36:21and local police were providing escorts for a few small groups of vehicles headed towards Calgary.
36:27Woo! Are we going home?
36:29Yep!
36:33Man, what luck! What f***ing luck!
36:35All right, here we go, here we go.
36:37Being able to get on that highway and be escorted out of the mountains towards Calgary,
36:44we're jumping for joy, we're slapping the steering wheel, we're excited.
36:49It was just pure happiness at this point, and relief.
36:53But not everyone has somewhere to go.
37:06When the Bow River spilled its banks, several large Siksika First Nation communities in our east of Calgary were devastated.
37:14They had over a thousand people that needed to be evacuated, if I recall, and 200 homes that were destroyed,
37:23because they were down near the river too, and they were just as devastated as any of the other communities that we worked with.
37:29The flood destroyed or damaged 1,000 Medicine Hat homes.
37:35But when the rising water stopped short of expected levels, some owners caught a lucky break.
37:43It looks like the water didn't even touch it.
37:46It looks like it was all for naught, which is better than frickin' anything I can imagine.
37:52I mean, you feel bad for the houses that were affected, but it wasn't, you know, up to your second story,
37:57or the whole floor, you know, taken out or anything like that.
38:00It was mostly basements and, you know, some people's backyards, but not just total devastation.
38:08You know, this is awesome news. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
38:13Not everyone was so lucky.
38:16Authorities confirmed that four people lost their lives in the disaster.
38:20And a 33-year-old woman, Jackie Brocklebank, from High River, was still missing.
38:27For two days, Jackie's family searched the evacuation centers, in and around High River, in vain.
38:37Then Jackie's mother received word that her daughter's body had been found.
38:42She'd lost her life in the flood waters.
38:45My understanding is, is that the water came and Jackie got hit by debris.
38:55Just a few hours before she was killed, Jackie saved the life of a friend.
39:00I think it's really important that High River remember the lives that were lost, and she was an important part of this town.
39:08Jackie's death raised the death toll to five.
39:14As waters slowly recede in Calgary, they tell a different story in High River.
39:20The town, named after the High Wood River that runs through it, is up to its neck in filthy, stagnant flood water.
39:26With the immediate disaster behind us, we had to try and hire the right team to come in and do the cleanup.
39:33Commercial divers, bulldozers, and truckloads of gear are brought in from all over the country, including some high-capacity mobile industrial pumps.
39:43We had worked out a strategy with the Emergency Operations Center in High River and the crews to build berms to divide up the community so that we could start to pump it out section by section.
39:55So we could at least start to free up some homes so that people would have the chance to go back and assess the damage.
40:02High volume pumps can suck in 45,000 litres a minute.
40:06Smaller pumps can suck 3,400 litres a minute.
40:09Combined, these pumps push out 400 million litres a day.
40:15But despite all this technology, some houses could not be saved.
40:20There were a lot of very unhappy people.
40:22They felt devastated and they wanted to go home, but many of them, there was no home to go back to.
40:29And that was probably the most emotionally challenging time, not just for me, but for the entire team, for police officers,
40:37because we knew we were in it for a long time.
40:41Weeks would pass before the financial costs of the Alberta floods would be known.
40:46But it would take more than time to heal the scars of those who lost more than they could bear.
40:51Two weeks after the worst flood in Alberta's history, some residents are allowed to return home.
41:04And John Reimer and his family are among the first to return to High River.
41:09Everything is caked in layers and layers of mud.
41:14The railroad running beside the road, it had been pushed over by the force of the water and was now a fence.
41:22We head up the stairs to our house, open the door.
41:26The first thing we notice is the stench.
41:30It smells like sewage and dirt and rotting meat.
41:33We had two fridges, one downstairs, one upstairs, and our freezer.
41:37We have to empty them out.
41:38We get to work right away.
41:39We're hauling things out.
41:40We rip out the carpet as soon as we can.
41:44And so we start tearing down.
41:46The ceiling was completely waterlogged because it had all evaporated.
41:51The government of Alberta declared the flood of 2013 to be the worst in the history of the province.
41:57A lot of these people were not covered by insurance.
42:01So that perhaps was the most difficult part of the recovery is just seeing the people who truly did suffer and knowing that it was going to be a very long time before they were able to come out of it.
42:13And I'm not sure everybody's come out of it all these years later.
42:16It became known as the flood of floods.
42:20Over 100,000 people were forced from their homes.
42:23From the city of Calgary to the suburbs and the small towns across the southern reaches of the province, the flood waters upended, damaged, or destroyed almost everything they touched.
42:36Claude Ferdin's house in the town of Ekshaw was demolished.
42:41The Ferdins decided to look for a bargain among the homes the government had just bought and marked for demolition in the floodplains of High River.
42:48There was an auction and the opening bid was around $100 or $200 per house.
42:55So I talked with my wife and we started to look at the idea of moving the whole house.
43:02With a low purchase price, the Ferdins could afford to move the house to a flood safe neighborhood and also pay for the renovations.
43:10If we continue to build homes in floodways, if we continue to build berms that just accelerate the water downstream and cause more disaster somewhere else, all we're doing is feeding the beast.
43:23And if we feed the beast, it's just going to get bigger and the disasters will get worse.
43:27The Ferdins moved their house 150 kilometers to high grounds in the town of Ekshaw, a place they now call home.
43:38It feels really good to have come this far and to bring a house like this all the way from High River was something that I think sounded crazy to start with and feels crazier now that it's done.
43:53But we're really proud of where we've come and the result of what we've finished.
44:00Calgary Stampede Park was almost completely submerged by the floodwaters.
44:05With less than two weeks to go before opening day of the 101st Stampede, organizers orchestrated a massive recovery effort.
44:13And the rodeo, exhibition and festival opened on time.
44:19Proof to all that Cowtown had come roaring back.
44:23They call this a one in 100 year flood because a flood like this theoretically happens once every 100 years.
44:31A generational event.
44:33Chances are people who went through the flood are never going to see something like that in their lives.
44:38But there are no guarantees. Those are just odds. And odds can be beaten.
44:44And this is the kind of odds you don't want to beat.
44:46Music by Ben Thede
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