Alberta premier Alison Redford paid a visit to Sundre on Friday, July 12 to see first-hand how much the town has suffered from overland flooding, after the Red Deer River breached its banks in June.
Redford visited Greenwood Campground to assess the flood damage with Sundre mayor Annette Clews and Ron Baker, the Town of Sundre's director of operations.
She then paid a visit to Foothills Lodge, along with George Vanderburg, associate minister of seniors, to chat with seniors about their evacuation experience.
Afterwards, she paid a visit to the Sundre Fire Hall, where she thanked first responders for their heroic efforts during the time of crisis.
“For me it's an opportunity to be able to visit communities that have been impacted by flooding. Of course we know throughout southern Alberta, more south than this, there's been tremendous impact,” said Redford.
“But it was also important to be able to come to communities that maybe, at first sight, didn't have the same impact, but had infrastructure that was impacted.”
She said there is a lot of work that needs to be done along the Red Deer River to help with flood prevention. However, she is happy with how the spurs worked during this flood.
“The other thing that's great about Sundre is that it's done some tremendous work on mitigation, through some support from the provincial government,” she said, when referring to the eight rock structures built along the river last year.
“Part of what I wanted to see was how that mitigation work to sort of stop flooding water actually helped the town and it really has been good.”
Seniors at Foothills Lodge sent Redford on the road with a large box of baking. She was commenting on how heavy the box was and Clews said the seniors do excellent baking.
“It's also a chance to come out and say thank you to volunteers and thank you to these wonderful seniors who picked up everything and moved to Olds for a short time,” said Redford.
“There's so many communities that have been impacted in so many ways and everyone has been impacted. Even though perhaps from the outside it doesn't look like as much water, water hurts communities and we've got to acknowledge that.”
Redford has been to Sundre several times, she said. When she was minister of justice she spent lots of time in Sundre and has visited the seniors at Foothills Lodge a number of times.
She was concerned to see the damage left at Greenwood Campground while observing the area.
“It's been quite tremendous to see the amount of damage, although I understand it's not the same impact that it was in 2005, but also to see how quickly the town recovered from that,” she said.
“So much of a cleanup has been done and people are coming back. These are important, not only because they're community building activities, but also they're a source of tourism and revenue. It was wonderful that the town was able to rebuild that as quickly as they were, so that people could continue to come and enjoy the beautiful town and the countryside.”
She says the provincial government is willing to help perform further mitigation work along the Red Deer River.
“I had the opportunity today (Friday) when I was in Olds to meet with a number of the mayors and reeves from Central Alberta about the fact that there's a lot of regional work now that they want to do together,” she said.
“We want to be part of that, because it's always better to mitigate than it is to have to deal with the aftermath of a flood, and so I think there is lots of opportunities,” she said.
“We're really into a rebuilding phase right now and it's going to be important for us to work together on that.”
