Come Hell Or High Water

 

I have been glued to the TV for the past 3 days as I watch my city disappear into a muddy river. I can’t even believe that this is happening to my city.

Anytime a natural disaster happens in the world my kids always ask a million questions about their safety and the safety of our house.

“Can we have a tornado here?”

“has Calgary ever had an earth quake?”

“what’s a tsunami?”

Thankfully I’ve always been able to tell them, with confidence, that the place we live is safe from harm from virtually every natural element aside from the odd winter storm but even they don’t last long in our city with the warm chinook winds that melt away all signs of chaos.

Today I have to comfort them and tell them that although our cities 2 rivers have breached their banks and flooded our inner city and closed our downtown core and covered the Stampede grounds and displaced over 100,000 residents and destroyed roads and homes and taken lives in High River and trapped people in Canmore, WE ARE SAFE.

It’s impossible to hide or shelter my children from seeing or hearing about the flood. Schools have been canceled, swim lessons have been canceled, sirens everywhere. The best thing I can do is hug them tight and tell them that we are ok. We are safe. The water won’t reach our house and yes, honey, your stuffy is safe.

As the sun shines today my thoughts are with all the families who have been evacuated from their homes and are at this time, uncertain as to what, if anything, they have to go back to. My gratitude goes out to the hundreds of employees with the city and power companies who are working round the clock to ensure control of electricity and quality of drinking water. My thanks go out to the exhausted police, fire and EMS workers who started their shift more than 2 days ago and are still going to keep us safe. My commitment goes out to my fellow Calgarians who will need my hands to volunteer where I can, when I can to recover our city from the water. My deepest condolences go out to the families who have lost loved ones during this tragedy.

The rivers have slowly started to recede and the true measure of the devastation is yet to be seen. In the days and weeks to come it will take a lot of work to clean, repair and rebuild.

But we can do it because there is one thing I know for sure about my city, we will come together, we will rebuild, we will be ok, come hell or high water.

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