The Flood

 This will be long. Sorry, I'm not sorry.
Over the last month or so we've had a lot of rain in Southern Alberta but last week was horrendous.
I'm going to say it started on Wednesday with tornado warnings and heavy rain predicted. While we didn't get the baseball to softball sized hail heavy rain was an understatment. The rain started heavily overnight and while it let up here for a couple of hours just on the other side of the highway was completely different. By the end of the rain, which I believe was late Monday morning, some places had seen 150cm (59inches) of rain. Canmore, West of Calgary went first. Both highways into town washed over or crumbled, the Highways just opened today (Wednesday). In Calgary 100,000 people were evacuated, including the homeless facility. High River, an hour from here and 30 mins south of Calgary was pretty much underwater. I think the whole town was evacuated and they have no date for reentry. Morley and Siksika, the reservations nearby, were also evacuated and have also been devastated.
It has been a horrible, heartbreaking week and there isn't much of an end in sight. People have lost everything, jobs, homes, pets; there were four fatalities.

What has come out of this is an overwhelming sense of pride and strength from our province and even a neighboring province. People are coming together, not caring who is next to them and putting lives back together. Opening homes, donating everything you could imagine and just loving, loving, loving. Calgary's mayor was in Toronto and jumped on the first flight he. From the time he landed he has not stopped. He has been shoulder to shoulder with strangers to focus on his only priority. Evacuation centers have had to stop accepting donations several times, there are people coming from out of town, out of province and pumping out basements for free, on Tuesday the city of Calgary put out a call for about 1000 volunteers, 7000 showed up.
I could never put into words how my heart feels knowing what is happening right now.
I'm not sure where all of these pictures came from and there are thousands more, if you know who took them let me know.

This was a creek and there was a pathway behind the houses.

Canmore cut off

Downtown Calgary/Arlene Dickinson

I don't have any of High River for some reason, here are links to The Calgary Herald for High River and Calgary, there are quite a few galleries on there from around Southern Alberta.

These ones just make my heart happy.

The military headed to High River.

 

If this doesn't make your heart happy you absolutely have a problem/Lyle Aspinall

I took a few pictures of donations while at the evac. site for the Drop-in Center.

Ignore Bill's butt, he wouldn't move. This room ended up PACKED to the top.

The pool room, not too long after a couple of truck loads went out.

The early stages of the bread room.

 This man cracks me up. When he was running I was so unsure of him but he as proven me so very wrong.

Everyone effected still needs prayers, happiness love and hope, things you can give no matter where you are.

If you click to see the videos on Youtube there are a ton more form around Alberta.
Thank you!!