Calgary Flooding Disaster

On Thursday , June 18, there was a retirement party for me at the school. It had been raining all week. When the party was over at 5:00 pm, I was going to go downtown and the radio in my car said the downtown was being evacuated and close to 75,000 people would have to leave their homes. I went home and turned on the television and watched the news coverage of the Bow River overflowing its banks and flooding the downtown core.  My house is located on the top of Edmonton Trail that is a road that leads out of the downtown core. It is a 45 minute walk from my house into the downtown core.  The downtown core is built on the flood plain of the Bow River.  Historically, has overflowed its banks during the spring time. Loggers in the 1890' used to float the logs all the way from  Kananaskis country and down the Bow River to Prince's Island in Calgary where a sawmill was located.  Today , Prince's Island is a forested city park where music concerts and festivals are held in the summer. Prince's Island is connected to North Calgary by a pedestrian bridge and another bridge connects the island to the southern downtown core.  The building of dams upstream at Seebee and Bearspaw have prevented the Bow River from overflowing its banks and given the City a false sense of security that the businesses and residences are safe to build in the flood plain.  When there is a larger than normal rainfall that falls in a short period of time all the tributaries flowing into the Bow and Elbow River overflows onto the floodplain.   In the photograph, I have posted,  the green area in the middle of the river is Prince's Island that is currently underwater.  Normally, if you were on the island the river would be 15 to thirty feet below the island.