It felt fitting to learn that Cochrane's Great Neighbours Week initiative will coincide with the 10-year anniversary of the southern Alberta floods next week.
As many readers will remember, the historic once-in-a-century flood of June 2013 ravaged the hamlet of Bragg Creek, resulted in the deaths of five people, the evacuations of over 100,000, and brought billions of dollars of destruction to Calgary, High River, Canmore, and other riverside communities.
This week's Eagle includes a poignant piece from reporter Howard May, who ventured out to Bragg Creek to interview residents about the upcoming 10-year anniversary of the flood that both physically and mentally altered the character of the community.
The residents May interviewed spoke of the resilience and attitude of neighbours helping neighbours that the hamlet community showed in the days, weeks, and months after the flood waters subsided and the lengthy rebuilding process got underway.
It's undeniable that Bragg Creek is a different place now than it was before the arrival of rushing waters on June 19 and 20, 2013. As former Rocky View County Coun. Liz Breakey described it, the 2013 flood was overall a learning experience.
There's no doubt about that. In the decade since, a crucial flood mitigation project has been completed along the banks of the Elbow River in Bragg Creek, and construction on the Springbank Off-stream Reservoir is finally underway after years of consultations with landowners (most of whom were originally opposed to the project), and pre-construction work.
This spring has been so uncharacteristically dry that the possibility of another flood is probably the last thing on most Bragg Creekers' minds these days. If anything, most people in the community are probably hoping for some much-needed rain to limit the wildfire possibilities that unfortunately tend to dominate Alberta's spring and summers these years.
But if you recall last June, our region experienced consecutive days of heavy rainfall, raising local river levels and causing governments in Alberta and elsewhere to scramble to assemble flood berms. It was a nerve-racking week that brought back intense memories for some, but generated a sense of vigilance that could only come from the experience of going through something terrible already.
