3 years after flood disaster, Calgary widow continues battle for compensation
CALGARY Long-time widow Anne Scott spends hours in her 67-yearold Rideau bungalow, sifting through the piles of documents covering her dining table — all reminders of an unwavering will to get the flood relief funding she adamantly believes she deserves.
The feisty 70-year-old was evacuated from her home after the devastating June 2013 flood sent a torrent of water through her basement, tossing furniture, destroying rosewood panelling and leaving a water line nearly one metre high.
“There are times when I think about this fight all the time,” she says. "All day, all night, I wake up and I think about it. My doctor is very worried about me, worried about my stress.
“But I can’t help but think about how many people this flood continues to impact, still. And how unfairly so many of us have been treated. It’s a disgrace.”
While Scott battles with the province for funds to rebuild, she need only walk a few blocks to find new mansions being constructed throughout Rideau and Roxboro, many larger than those that preceded them.
“The province has paid $51 million for buyouts,” she says. “But somehow they can’t get me what I need just so I can have a basement, just so my home can have some value again.”
As the third-year anniversary of Southern Alberta’s historic flood arrives, communities impacted by the devastation are still in disarray, with many streets a jarring patchwork of either pristine homes, empty and overgrown lots, or rebuilds midway through construction.
Many residents have moved on, while others still struggle financially and emotionally.
Just last week, demolition has started on some of the 17 homes in Elbow Park and Rideau-Roxboro which received buyouts from the province. The process has left neighbours questioning what will happen to the properties once they also become empty lots, adding to the already unkempt spaces in the area.
Brenda Leeds Binder, an Elbow Park resident and spokeswoman for the Calgary River Communities Action Group, says while the process of offering buyouts to some landowners and not others on the same street has been controversial and confusing, it has also devalued the community.
“Determining who would get buyouts — it was very arbitrary, based on computer mapping from the 1980s,” she says.