About 75,000 people were evacuated from Calgary, Alberta, after unusually heavy flooding made its way into the city, the center of Canada’s oil and gas industry, beginning late Thursday into Friday. Hit the Jump.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said that four people may have died near High River, Alberta, which was overwhelmed by floods earlier on Thursday. Two lifeless bodies were sighted but not recovered, a woman was apparently swept away in a camper and a man fell out of a canoe and disappeared.
A stationary weather system brought more rainfall in 48 hours than the normally arid region usually sees in a month, close to a foot of rain in some places.
The Bow River and the Elbow River spilled into five Calgary neighborhoods, forcing a shutdown of the city’s downtown. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation set up emergency facilities at a technical university after its radio and television studios were evacuated. In the Saddledome, where the Calgary Flames hockey team plays, water had risen to the eighth row of seats by midday. And although the city’s zoo, on an island in the Bow, was flooded, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said that it was not necessary to evacuate the animals “as much as I want the photograph of the lion in the jail.”
At a news conference, the mayor said the Bow River “looks like an ocean” and described watching the Elbow River spill over the top of a dam in Calgary, which has a metropolitan population of 1.2 million.
Pray for Alberta. Let us know what you think.
via NYTimes
