Volunteers gather in Calgary.
Hundreds pitch in to help neighbours
CALGARY — Neighbours, strangers, friends and friends-of-friends-of-friends packed their rubber boots and work gloves and fanned out across the city Monday to help communities hard hit by flood waters.
The city’s first formal volunteer drive — officials put out an early-morning call for about 600 people — coincided with an outpouring of community spirit as volunteers by the hundreds lent a hand wherever possible.
Troy Hermann walked across a bridge to the Bowness neighbourhood in west Calgary to join apartment residents ripping out carpets and hauling soggy mattresses to garbage trucks.
“I just came in here, asked the guy if he needed some help, and he said, ‘Yeah, I need help getting some rugs out,’ ” Hermann said. “I wanted to just show that it’s important we care for everybody.”
The Bowness street, slicked deep with mud, is lined with homes hit badly by the flood. Piles of garbage rose high on front lawns Monday as residents sifted through ruined possessions — an antique blanket handmade in Russia, a beloved ballerina slipper childhood Christmas ornament, boxes of pictures, couches, TVs and carpets.
At Geoff Wilcox’s place on the banks of the Bow, a large hole gaped on the south side of the house, leaving the gas line exposed and the home uninhabitable.
A small group kept busy helping with the colossal cleanup.
A resident from down the street brought his bobcat over to help fill a waist-deep sinkhole in Wilcox’s driveway. An old neighbour returned to the community to help.
“Some of them I know, some of them I don’t,” Wilcox said of the workers.
“Everybody helps each other out. Things are getting done quickly.”
A crew of volunteers also helped Robin Yeast clean out her Bowness home. She’d put the character house on the market to sell just weeks before the flood. On Monday, its inside was gutted, with just a few pieces of art left on the walls and some wet furniture inside.
She lost most of her things — “That weird box of stuff you have, old letters and memories of loves gone by. Kids’ memorabilia, drawings and pictures, my sweater that my grandma knit me when I was two,” plus all the furniture she’d left in the house to help sell it.
On Monday, people she just met helped strip the drywall from her home. Others delivered snacks. Yeast felt awed by the support.
“It’s fabulous. It just makes you feel, ‘Wow, that’s really supportive,’ ” she said.
Cheryl Algeo, whose Bowness basement and main floor were flooded, said she felt “blessed” despite the damage.
“We’ll try to salvage whatever we can. The community is coming together so beautifully,” she said. “We’ll get through it. The people and the volunteers have been incredible.”
At McMahon Stadium on Monday, where an estimated 2,500 would-be workers arrived at the mustering point for the city’s first round of volunteers, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he was overwhelmed by the response.
“I know there has been this incredible outpouring of people who want to help. We’ve been trying to hold it back until we could ensure everyone’s safety,” he said.
“Now that we can, I knew that this would happen.”
With the city’s volunteer ranks filled astonishingly fast, Nenshi urged people to “Get out there and help. Don’t wait to be asked.”
The mayor said he’s already seen such ad hoc community efforts spring up — kids setting up lemonade stands to raise cash for relief efforts, people bringing coffee to emergency responders.
Calgary Emergency Management Agency director Bruce Burrell said the city will look to the hard work and spirit of citizens in the coming days. Contractors can be hired to work on big infrastructure repairs, but there’s still plenty for the community to do, too.
“The spirit of volunteerism is going to be incredibly important to us getting the city back on its feet as quickly as possible,” Burrell said.