The extent of private property damage in Sundre from the June flood is undetermined at this point.
Late last week, Town of Sundre officials visited the residential and commercial properties believed to have been affected by the flood and dropped off water testing kits. Two properties were known to have sustained flood damage.
As of Friday, between 40 and 50 Mountain View County residents had picked up flood assistance forms from the Town of Sundre office.
The Red Deer River began breaching its banks June 20, causing overland flooding in several parts of town and throughout the county.
Randy Urlacher, a resident of the northeast part of town, says his basement was underwater on June 23. However, he is unsure if the exact cause was the flood.
“We've been working tirelessly since Sunday trying to dry it out. I can't say that it's definitely from a flood. I just don't know the exact source of the water,” explained Urlacher.
“Sunday (June 23) evening we went downstairs to watch a movie in our new theatre room and stepped off the bottom stair into a puddle of water. The basement was underwater,” he said. “The bottom level had about four inches of water in it.”
The basement was recently renovated with new carpets, not even a month ago, he said.
After taking all his belongings out of the basement, he ended up taking two loads of damaged goods to the dump. He figures the total damage will be somewhere around $10,000 to $15,000.
“I've already spent $1,500 just on trying to mitigate the damage and that's not counting what I've lost,” he said.
However, he has sympathy for the people across southern Alberta who have suffered worse from the floods.
“The worst of what we faced was the loss of a bunch of pictures that were handed down from generations; you just can't replace that,” he said.
On the bright side, his employer at Shell Canada has been a big help, he said.
“My employer made it as easy as possible on me during this time of crisis for myself and my family,” he said.
“They allowed me time away from work in order to deal with this situation and that is extremely valuable to me.”
Becky Hutchings, who lives on Main Avenue east, near Tall Timber, says she is lucky.
She received a call to pick up her children, while she was at work at Country Road RV, on June 20. Her son Cole is in Grade 1 at River Valley School and her daughter Sierra was at daycare.
“Somebody at the daycare mentioned that they were evacuating the east side and then I saw the police coming down the road, so I started packing up and getting ready,” said Hutchings.
“Then I left and I thought, well the only place I can go with two kids, three cats and a dog is my sister's apartment in Bowness, so I went to Bowness (Calgary) and within about half an hour we got evacuated from there,” she said.
She ended up going to a friend's place in Nose Hill in Calgary and returned to Sundre on the evening of June 22.
“I was happy to come home and see that my house was fine and there wasn't any water in the basement,” she said.
“I'm luckier than many other people.”
However, she said at the time of evacuation she was nervous and stressed to tears after seeing videos of Canmore on Facebook. She also wasn't sure if she was going to come home to a job.
Her mother lives along Cougar Creek in Canmore and is now homeless because her house is near collapsing, after the creek undermined it, she said.
“I hope that everybody affected can come out of it and get their lives back to normal,” she said.
“It's a scary situation. I hope it never happens again.”
