Teamwork gets farmers market open after flooding
The Calgary Farmers’ Market was open for business Thursday morning, a day after a broken water main flooded the parking lot and about half of the building.
Market spokeswoman Amanda Langbroek said about 25,000 square feet of the market was covered with five to eight centimetres of water on Wednesday following the break. But after cleanup efforts by vendors and a restoration crew, everyone is feeling “really relieved” the market avoided substantial damage.
“This morning we are pretty much dry,” she said Thursday. “You can see tiny little puddles of water, but vendors were on site and the restoration crew until about midnight, just getting rid of all the water and drying everything out, so this morning, I think people are just coming in kind of cleaning up the last of everything.”
While she said the market doesn’t yet know the full extent of the damage, any product that was on the floor could be damaged, along with potentially refrigerator units.
“Right now, we’re actually very thankful there wasn’t a ton of damage,” she said.
“There’s lots of wood in the farmers’ market — all the bases. So right now we’re just trying to salvage to make sure all the woodwork doesn’t get damaged any further.”
Sharla Dube, owner of the Cherry Pit, said her business had some electrical damage, including one computer system that went down, but the produce escaped damage because it is stored off the ground on pallets.
Dube said she’s grateful that everyone pulled together Wednesday evening to make sure doors could open at 9 a.m. Thursday.
“It was amazing to see how many of the vendors came to help,” she said.
“There were probably like 10 vendors — people I don’t even know — were helping us squeegee the floors and clean out the coolers. So it’s amazing with a small group like the Calgary Farmers’ Market. We’re all business owners and we’re all willing to help.”
Lolly James, who was getting the Canadian Comfort booth ready Thursday morning, said she was expecting a lot worse when she came in.
“They cleaned it up in such a hurry,” she said. “They did such a fantastic job.”
Darcy Nakamura with Bauer Meats noted all the vendors in the market “depend on this time of year.”
“I’ve developed a lot of friendships here,” she said. “So it kind of hurts to see the people around me affected a little bit more than I am, but all in all, I’m lucky and thankful.”
Langbroek said the flood restoration crew will return to the market after it closes Thursday to continue their cleanup work.
“Everyone’s much happier than we were last night,” she said. “Things are looking up — it’s much brighter in here this morning.”