Calgary doesn’t fit common disaster pattern: expert
Wealthy neighbourhoods were among the hardest-hit areas
The flooding that ravaged some of Calgary’s wealthiest neighbourhoods makes it stand out from past major floods in North American cities, says an expert in disaster sociology.
Most cities feature impoverished neighbourhoods near geographically vulnerable areas, making them more prone to flooding, said Timothy Haney, an assistant professor of sociology at Calgary’s Mount Royal University. That was the case when hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005.
But real estate development in Calgary has led to high-end neighbourhoods springing up along the river where residents can enjoy walking and biking paths.
One of the first neighbourhoods evacuated and flooded was Elbow Park, an affluent area bordered to the south and east by the river.
“I have never heard of any other city where that’s happened,” said Haney, a Calgarian of four years who lived in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.
While flooding did affect Calgary’s lower-income neighbourhoods, including Bowness and Montgomery, their gentrification in the past decade has attracted a more middleclass crowd.
As such, the dynamics of recovery in the city will differ markedly from past flooding disasters. The people most affected will have significant resources at their disposal, Haney said.
“It’s never easy and it’s still really traumatic, but it’s different than most floods in that, most of the time, the people who flood are the people who don’t have the ability to fund their own recoveries.”
Moreover, flooding has affected about 12 per cent of Calgary residential real estate, while about 80 per cent of New Orleans was under water for two weeks. With flooding victims able to get support from family and friends, shelters in the city have been running under capacity.
Compassion from neighbours and strangers alike is also a salient characteristic of disasters, Haney said. It only magnifies the closer people are to a disaster.
That’s what’s happened between Edmonton and Calgary, which partly explains the sudden erosion of the supposed rivalry.
“The rivalry is very superficial. It’s based around things like sports teams that during a time of crisis just don’t matter,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all that people from Edmonton are going to great lengths to help out people in Calgary. If the reverse were true, I’m sure Calgary would do the same.”
Because of people’s innate desire to help others, stories of heroism typically emerge during disasters, such as the High River man who swam in dangerous waters last week to save his cat, Momo. Haney noted that people will often see the “best of humanity come out” during disasters.
Haney cautioned that compassion fatigue could eventually set in, a condition in which compassion gradually lessens because of repeated exposure to suffering.
“After a while, you develop a hard shell to it and it doesn’t faze you as much as it did, and that’s when the compassion fatigue can settle in.”
In the meantime, as communities in southern Alberta deal with the aftermath of the flooding, Haney said they will need to start thinking about mitigating their vulnerability.
With global disasters on the rise because of factors such as climate change, vulnerable communities in Alberta, such as homes for seniors and aboriginal reserves, must determine their needs in times of crisis, Haney said.
“When I first came to Calgary, people said, ‘You’re gonna be out of luck here working as a disaster sociologist. We don’t have stuff like that here,’” he said. “But there always those one-off events that are incredibly catastrophic.”