Canada: Move on, rebuild smarter, elsewhere: flood lessons learned in parts of Alberta

The images this week of flooded streets and houses in parts of Quebec and Ontario, and British Columbia's experiences with rising waters are all too familiar to Albertans, who in 2013 suffered through one of the worst floods in the province's history.

Thousands of people in dozens of municipalities in Quebec are displaced by recent flooding as military and navy personnel remained in communities to prepare for possibly more rainfall this weekend. Many residents in Ottawa, among the Ontario areas hit by recent flooding, are just starting to return to their homes and assessing the damage, while hundreds in B.C. remain out of their homes after evacuation orders were issued last week. 

Nearly four years earlier, the southern Alberta floodwaters that inundated Calgary, High River, Canmore and more than two dozen other communities following days of heavy rainfall left an unprecedented swath of destruction — resulting in five deaths and tens of thousands being forced from their homes, and causing damage in excess of $5 billion.
Alberta resident Jane Russell recalled that surveying the damage was like "walking through a war zone."

"There was debris and things that were never there before, and the silt was three feet [a metre] or more deep."
Russell was forced out of her home of 25 years in High River, one of the worst-hit communities in 2013.
"From the outside you say, 'Oh it's just water on the street,' but you know their basement is full of water," said Russell.
"It's not even seeing it as much as knowing what they're going to be going through next. The gross smell, the cleanup, the grief of the loss."

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