Calgary flooding cleanup continues in some communities
‘There's no way to prepare for a storm like we saw Tuesday,’ city says
The cleanup continues from a thunderstorm that caused flooding Tuesday in some parts of Calgary.
The storm also slowed traffic and affected C-Train Service and the city says the storm sewer system isn't built to handle weather that powerful.
Emily Brucks was moving shelves Wednesday so she can get to the water pooled up in the corner of the beer cooler at the Haysboro liquor store she manages.
"It came from a manhole out back of the store here. We had about four inches of rain in there. And it just kept coming and kept coming and kept coming. Everything is soaked so we have been cleaning and mopping up since last night after the flood," Brucks said.
"It was mayhem."
The manhole was overflowing because the sewer system was taking in more water than it could handle.
Social media was full of submerged cars, some of which were waiting for their unsuspecting owners at the Southland and Heritage C-Train stations.
<a href="https://twitter.com/calgarytransit">@calgarytransit</a> Heritage, Southland and Anderson have some pretty nasty flooding. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/yyc?src=hash">#yyc</a> <a href="https://t.co/npNrTa2Yq3">pic.twitter.com/npNrTa2Yq3</a>
—@3v3tsFlooding was reported in the area around the station on Macleod Trail and Willow Park Drive, and C-Train service was disrupted between Chinook and Anderson stations.There were also reports that 14th Street was closed at 90th Avenue around 4:30 p.m.
Heavy hail was witnessed in some areas of the city.
Even some people indoors were not protected from the storm. Heavy rainfall penetrated some office ceilings in Calgary, forcing staff to improvise.
John Headley, waste water operations leader with the city, says there's no way to prepare for a storm like we saw Tuesday.
"We had an event that was greater than one in one hundred years. Normally our system is designed to handle one in every five years. So the system is just not designed for that kind of weather happening," Headley said.
He says this storm was more difficult to handle because there was so much rain in a short period of time.
