Sundre residents are being praised for the outpouring of support for their fellow residents during the recent flood scare in town.
The Red Deer River breached its banks on June 20, causing flooding in several areas of town and forcing several evacuations. Sundre residents are now in recovery mode after sustaining flooding that was less than predicted.
Sundre mayor Annette Clews says she is amazed with the amount of support from the community during this difficult time.
“The community support has been absolutely fabulous. I cannot praise our community enough to let them know just how grateful for the community we have,” said Clews.
“Between all the volunteers with search and rescue, the fire department, Greenwood Neighbourhood Place and just general public showing up or phoning in and letting us know that they're there to help wherever and whenever is amazing.”
The town also received assistance from the Town of Didsbury and the Town of Olds.
Various Sundre residents were stopping in the town office on Friday, June21 and offering all sorts of volunteer services. Residents were asking if they could help sandbag any of the affected areas, or if they could make sandwiches for emergency personnel.
“I'm really grateful we didn't experience what was expected. I appreciate everybody who was working with our emergency personnel and staying away from the river and evacuating in a timely manner; it is very much appreciated. That made their jobs so much easier,” expressed Clews.
“I am overwhelmed by the amount of generosity and compassion from the community. I can't get over just how many people are showing up and saying ‘what can I do, how can I help'.”
Marty Butts, the Town of Sundre's fire chief, says part of the reason members from the fire department were able to help as much as they did was because of recently purchased equipment.
He also said that the fire department wouldn't have the equipment if it weren't for the fundraising efforts from the community.
“That's where a lot of our fundraised money went to lately, is getting swift water rescue gear and training for people,” said Butts.
“We seen a need and we fundraised for it and people helped us fundraise and we got wetsuits, dry suits and equipment and training for the guys. And if that wouldn't have happened, we wouldn't have had the stuff to do the job properly,” he said.
The next purchase he is hoping for for the fire department will be a river jet boat, he said.
“This is one more incident and another tool would have been awesome to have,” he said.
“Overall, I'm very impressed how everybody came together. The town, fire department, search and rescue, all the volunteers, the people that just came in to help - it was a great effort by the whole community actually.”
He said the fire department responded to three or four swift water rescues, several medical calls and assisted with evacuations and cleanup after the river receded.
“I'm very impressed with my guys. We train for this stuff and it showed,” he said.
“Hats off for Ron Baker, who did an awesome job. He was looking after EOC (Emergency Operations Centre) as the incident command for the town and he pulled things together fairly quick and got things rolling,” he said.
“We worked as a team right from start to finish.”
About 30 members from the fire department, nearly the whole crew, worked for several hours from June 20 to June 24, he said.
Volunteers from Greenwood Neighbourhood Place (GNP) also helped in assisting with the flood.
“We were asked to help out at the EOC and we also played a role in manning the reception centre at Olds College,” said Marita Stermann, executive director for GNP.
Along with Stermann, two other GNP members helped and the rest of the team was on standby and more than willing to help, she said.
The three GNP members worked Thursday night and then Saturday morning to assist seniors that were leaving the evacuation centre at Olds College to return home to Sundre.
“It's also part of our mandate, where our family community support services, which is under GNP, is playing a role in these kind of disasters to actually assist with setting up a reception centre,” she explained.
“But because it was outside of our community, we definitely felt that it was our role to help out with the shift and to relieve the people at the reception centre and assist with our people that were stranded and had to go there.”
She said there were also seniors there that knew the GNP members and were glad to see familiar faces.
“I think we've seen a great effort from community people to come together and help and we've seen a very capable town administration handling the emergency and I was quite impressed with how things were handled,” she said.
There is a fundraising barn dance on July 5 at the big red barn in Bergen, where all proceeds will be donated to the Red Cross for flood victims.
