3 die in floods, 75,000 forced from Calgary homes

A police car sits stuck in a parking lot of an apartment building after heavy rains have caused flooding, closed roads, and forced evacuation in Calgary, Alberta, Canada Friday, June 21, 2013.
A police car sits stuck in a parking lot of an apartment building after heavy rains have caused flooding, closed roads, and forced evacuation in Calgary, Alberta, Canada Friday, June 21, 2013.

CALGARY, Alberta — At least three people were killed by floodwaters that devastated much of southern Alberta, leading authorities to evacuate the western Canadian city of Calgary's entire downtown. Inside the city's hockey arena, the waters reached as high as the 10th row.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the level of flooding "stunning" and said officials don't know yet if it will get worse, but said the water has peaked and stabilized and noted that the weather has improved.

Overflowing rivers washed out roads and bridges, soaked homes and turned streets into dirt-brown waterways around southern Alberta. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Patricia Neely said two bodies were recovered and third was in an area that made it too dangerous to recover.

As the sun rose in Calgary on Saturday morning it wasn't raining. Some of the 75,000 flood evacuees were holding out hope they might soon be allowed back into their homes. However, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said earlier the downtown area was still without power and remained off limit. "It is extremely unlikely that people will be able to return to those buildings before the middle of next week," he said.

Nenshi also warned there could be another wave of danger ahead.

"There is a scenario in which upstream events at the dams further upstream from the city will lead to another surge in the Bow River," he said. "We don't know how realistic that scenario is, but we will have some hours warning if that actually happens."

The flood has hit some of the city's iconic structures hard. The Saddledome, home to the National Hockey League's Calgary Flames, was flooded up to the 10th row. That would mean the dressing rooms are submerged as well.

Harper, a Calgary resident, said he never imagined there would be a flood of this magnitude in this part of Canada.

"This is incredible. I've seen a little bit of flooding in Calgary before. I don't think any of us have seen anything like this before. The magnitude is just extraordinary," he said.

"We're all very concerned that if gets much more than this it could have real impact on infrastructure and other services longer term, so we're hoping things will subside a bit."

Twenty-five neighborhoods in the city, with an estimated 75,000 residents, were evacuated due to floodwaters in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics and is the center of Canada's oil industry. About 1,500 have gone to emergency shelters while the rest have found shelter with family or friends, Nenshi said.

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