Flood

The past couple days have been pretty surreal.

It started Thursday morning with the reports of the flooding in Canmore. As a group of structural engineers who design bridges, my co-workers and I scoured the internet for photos... real life examples of the numbers that we design to... evidence that what we design is strong enough... amazed to see that typically it is.

And then it hit Calgary... Dave was at work on Thursday night and had a direct connection to the City's emergency response communications. As soon as he began to hear word of the neighbourhoods around us getting evacuated he called home... "get everything out of the basement, get ready to leave."

I made countless trips up and down the basement stairs, hauling everything I could up to higher ground. That night I barely slept a wink, listening to the sirens around our home, waiting for the sirens that signalled it was time to get up and go.

The sun rose on Friday... despite being on the river, our neighbourhood was still dry. ... our house was barely two blocks outside of the evacuation zone but we were still at home. We are still nervously watching our basement for sewer backup but we are loving our little house and beautiful neighbourhood even more today... a tiny oasis of high ground.

We count ourselves as blessed.

Our hearts go out to those who were evacuated and have potentially lost their homes. We only had to contemplate that reality, imagine the heartbreak of having to walk away from the house we have poured our hearts into.

We are absolutely amazed by the strength, courage and compassion our city has displayed over the past couple days. There is no doubt that Calgary will rise out of these waters only to be a better, stronger city then it already is.

We are proud to call Calgary our home.

Amy

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