The revelation that a flood study conducted in the exact area describing in detail the devastation that hit southern Alberta elicited a font of insight from brokers, for our Comment of the Week.
As related in the “2012 Calgary flood study: I told you so” article, it was revealed that the study had been presented to city and provincial officials back in 2012. Thom C.J. Young commented that the problem started when the development started in the Highwood River valley.
“It is always late when the predictions are ignored,” he said. “The simplest infrastructure configuration to ensure power would remain on and engineering the obvious from the land surveys wasn't even considered in the development planning along the Highwood River valley. There's no defense of this failure except to note that we are able to convince ourselves of almost anything.”
Another earlier comment from Cb-Calgary defended those officials, citing the millions of dollars and many months required to upgrade infrastructure.
“In the defence of McQueen... even if the city/ province took action on the matter back in 2012 – there was minimal reasons to jump in and invest millions of dollars to rush the preventative changes to be done by June, 2013,” said Cb-Calgary. “I'm sure there would’ve been several steps before moving forward with the changes, including plans drawn, budget approvals and whatever else accompanies these situations. Realistically, when does it ever take less than 12 months to totally physically overhaul an entire city’s/province’s flood prevention program? We maybe foresaw the possibility of a flood but it was a little late.”
