Pulling High River back from brink
Recovery efforts began even as floods raged
(Potable water) and safety of residents is everything.
CHAD MOORE
Chad Moore just wanted a cigarette.
Nearly 48 hours had passed since Moore and a colleague dutifully chose to stay inside High River’s water treatment plant after the June 20 flash flood tore through the southern Alberta town.
While raging flood water forced roughly 13,000 residents to flee their homes and businesses, many town staff — like Moore — remained, feverishly working to prevent High River’s critical infrastructure from collapse.
“It was almost like you were in a war movie,” said Moore, facility supervisor of the town’s water treatment plant. “It wasn’t something I’d ever want to go through ever again.”
He and his co-worker, Colin Andrews, had almost no food, sustaining themselves on microwave popcorn and water. It would be two days before relief workers arrived. Moore made a simple request: Bring two packs of regular-size Players Light cigarettes.
“We knew we were going to be here for the long haul,” Moore said. “It wasn’t the time I wanted to start quitting ... it’s about the time you start chain-smoking.”
Nine days would pass before town and provincial officials felt comfortable enough to slowly lift a mandatory evacuation and allow residents to return to their homes.
But before that happened, myriad infrastructure had to be repaired. Electricity had to be restored. Toilets had to flush. Roads needed to be cleared. Water had to be potable. Phones needed to ring.
This is the story of how officials brought the community back from the brink of collapse in the face of Alberta’s worst-ever natural disaster.
Inside the town’s water-treatment plant, the 27-year-old Moore and his colleague faced the daunting, yet critical task of preventing High River’s water system from completely shutting down.
“We’re taught to be back here and manage the plant,” Moore said. “(Potable water) and safety of residents is everything.”
Brown flood water had quickly submerged the town’s dozen supply wells, damaging their electrical controls.
The water treatment facility, protected by a hastily built berm, was shut down around noon June 20 to prevent turbid flood water from entering the system through the supply wells.
The town was now relying on its reservoir to maintain pressure throughout the water lines. If the reservoir depleted, water lines could depressurize and break — a grim scenario.
Broken water lines would cost millions of dollars in repairs and threaten the quality of the town’s potable water supply for several more weeks.
Crews reduced pressure in the water lines by half after workers discovered numerous leaks in the water system.
“(As) people’s basements were flooding, the (clothes) washer would float and rip the lines off,” said Reiley McKerracher, High River’s manager of engineering. “That was an issue, so we had to turn water off to certain houses.”
Further, firefighters nearly drained the reservoir dousing a house fire.
That left workers with no choice but to draw water from the tainted supply wells to maintain pressure. A boil water advisory was issued for the town.
Heavy-duty hydrovac trucks soon arrived and began to flush the town’s water lines. Extra chlorine was added until the water met acceptable health safety levels.
Many of the town’s 13 sewage lift stations — equipment that pumps waste to a treatment plant — were also submerged in muddy water. The motor for the main lift station had to be removed and repaired.
On June 26, town workers had restored limited water and sewer service to the town.
The boil water advisory remained in place until July 19, a month after the flood hit.
“There’s a saying that a doctor is in control of one man’s life (and) a water treatment plant operator is in control of everyone else’s,” Moore said.
“If water systems have problems ... you can get people sick,” he added. “I wanted to be here to make sure it was done right and that all residents would have safe, potable drinking water.”
While muddy flood water strained High River’s water and sewer systems, the disaster seemingly caused minimal damage to its electrical infrastructure.
Power flickered and failed throughout the town during the initial hours and days following the June 20 deluge.
Within two days, more than 200 power line technicians from utility company FortisAlberta descended on the town to inspect residences and businesses.
Roughly 6,700 power meters were subsequently disconnected and secured to prevent electricalrelated injury.
Transformers and electrical cubicles were cleaned, repaired and inspected. Yet, much of the critical electrical equipment escaped relatively unscathed — a result of improvements following the 2005 flood, according to the company.
“We upgraded several river crossings with new infrastructure and that infrastructure was capable of withstanding periods of flooding and riverbank erosion for example,” said Jennifer MacGowan, spokeswoman with FortisAlberta.
By June 29, when officials began a staged re-entry of the town, FortisAlberta had restored power to 850 residences.
And by mid-July, power was returned to most businesses and homes that were deemed safe.
When disaster strikes a community, relaying critical information to citizens becomes paramount.
Flood water quickly knocked out much of High River’s communications network.
Many of the town’s computer servers and Telus’ central office were swamped when a wall of water hit downtown that morning.
Thousands were forced to evacuate, and town staff were suddenly without Internet, land line telephones or cellular service.
Officials were forced to be creative in relaying emergency updates to its citizens.
Updates were subsequently written on paper and dictated to staff in Calgary or one of several evacuation centres via satellite phone, ham radio and borrowed cellphones connected to still functioning networks.
Still, the network was overloaded, said Joan Botkin, High River’s communication manager.
“Everyone was trying to connect to the servers through the Internet,” she said. “So the servers might be working but you couldn’t get to them because the Internet was overloaded.”
On June 21, Telus workers deployed three mobile COWs (Cell On Wheels) to restore and boost its wireless capacity in the area and cope with the additional traffic.
“It was similar to (wireless) traffic found on the grounds during (the Calgary) Stampede week,” said Chris Gerritsen, Telus spokesman. “You’ve got homeowner, contractors, relief workers ... there was tremendous pressure on the network.”
It took two weeks for Telus crews to repair or replace damaged fibre optic lines and cables.
Similarly, the town’s IT staff had repaired or replaced computer servers, allowing for more timely updates of the ongoing recovery.
“Even when we had our servers going ... it was up and down, up and down all the time for at least the first two weeks,” said Botkin.
As staff and contractors worked to restore water, sewer, power and communications to the town, a massive lake caused by the flood had submerged two communities in the town’s northeast.
Hampton Hills and Sunrise had never experienced flooding before June 20. But early June 21, flood water rushed into the low-lying communities from the north — and stayed for weeks.
Officials struggled with the enormity of the problem. At first they relied on gravity to drain water into the nearby Little Bow Canal. Water pumps and hoses were then brought in.
Both methods proved inadequate for the task at hand.
Dirt berms were then built to divide the massive lake into smaller, more manageable sections. Larger water pumps, some with 60-centimetre intakes, were hauled in from across the province, including massive pumps from a Suncor operation in northern Alberta.
Contractors worked around the clock welding sections of 30- and 45-centimetre pipe together.
“You actually have to use hard pipe because of the size and the pressure used,” said McKerracher. “You can have a six-inch pump running in a couple hours. What we were doing was a little more aggressive.”
At the height of the operation, more than 84,000 gallons of water was pumped into the Little Bow Canal every minute, nearing its 300 cubic feet per second capacity.
Provincial officials initially expressed reservations over the operation, fearing the volume of water would compromise the canal, and that the turbidity of the water could damage the environment.
“(The canal) was already in a precarious state in certain locations,” said McKerracher. “They were concerned that if we pushed too much we could make things a lot worse.”