[00:00:13] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Weathering the Storm stories of the climate crises from Alberta and around the world. The series is a part of the community podcast initiative in partnership with the Climate Disaster Project.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Your host, Riley Fonger.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: And I'm Bayleigh Arbic.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: In this episode, we are talking about the 2013 floods in Calgary, Alberta. However, our stories don't just come from the heart of Calgary.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: While we do have one person's experience living downtown in the heart of Calgary when the disaster struck, we also get the perspective of an individual who's affected by the floods in the High River and the surrounding area.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: As you might know, the 2013 floods in Calgary is the biggest climate disaster that has touched the heart of the.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: City.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: In just three days. In June of 2013, an estimated 250,000 rain fell over Calgary and flooded the Bow and Elbow River. It led to over $5 billion in damage, leaving more than 20 bridges, closed, 34,000 locations without electricity, and the evacuation of 100,000 calgarians.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: In this episode, our guest Jake Badell was one of those people evacuated. He was 13 years old at the time, living in the community of Roxborough. This neighborhood runs directly along the heart of the Elbow River and was one of the worst areas struck by the disaster. He was directly affected by and experienced the hardships of the flood firsthand. Today, he is willing to sit down and share his story of that experience. Here's our conversation.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: Could you tell me specifically the disaster we're talking about?
[00:02:00] Speaker D: This is the 2013 floods in Alberta, specifically in Calgary.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: So to start, the more people know about someone, the more they can feel connected to that person. We also know what happens to a person during a disaster can be affected by who is a part of their family. That's why we'd like to ask you some of these questions. Could you tell me about who you are?
[00:02:24] Speaker D: My name is Jake. I was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Now I'm a student at Mount Royal University studying finance and economics.
I love sports and I love the outdoors.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: So I guess growing up, did you play any sports?
[00:02:42] Speaker D: Yes, I played hockey my whole life. For about 18 years of my life, I was playing hockey.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: So is that what you were most often doing other than work before the disaster happened?
[00:02:54] Speaker D: Yeah, that and as I was a kid, I was just living life, hanging out with my friends outside.
[00:03:00] Speaker C: Just a pretty typical, average childhood life.
[00:03:04] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Could you tell me about the people you were living with at the time the disaster happened?
[00:03:12] Speaker D: I was living with my mom and my sister.
I'm pretty sure in 2013 I was in grade seven at the time, maybe grade five, maybe grade five or six. But yeah, I was living with my mom, my sister, in Roxboro in Calgary.
[00:03:29] Speaker C: So would you say those were the people who most often took care of you at the time the disaster happened?
[00:03:34] Speaker D: Yeah, my mom took care of me and my sister.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: And do you mind telling me how old you exactly were at the time the disaster happened?
[00:03:42] Speaker D: I was 13 years old.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: What happens to a person during a disaster can be affected by where they were staying. That's why we'd like to ask you these questions. Could you tell me how you came to be in Roxboro during the disaster?
[00:03:57] Speaker D: Well, I grew up in Elbow Park, and then I think three years prior to the national disaster, my family moved to Roxboro, and we've just been living there for about three years before the disaster.
[00:04:11] Speaker C: What was the community like before the disaster? Just everyday life.
[00:04:16] Speaker D: It was a very friendly community.
There was honestly a lot of wealthy people just because it was right next to the river, big houses on the river. But, yeah, a very friendly neighborhood.
[00:04:28] Speaker C: So you were staying in Roxboro at the time of the disaster?
[00:04:31] Speaker D: Yep, I lived in Roxboro.
[00:04:33] Speaker C: Awesome. If you're comfortable with it, I'd like to ask you questions pertaining to the disaster now.
[00:04:38] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm comfortable.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: Each person has different memories of a disaster. That's why we'd like to ask you these questions. Could you describe how you became aware of the disaster?
[00:04:50] Speaker D: I remember being at school, at Alboya School, and it was the end of the day, and the whole school got called into the gymnasium, and the principal told us there was a flood going on in the city. And then she proceeded to list off neighborhoods, and she said, if you lived in these neighborhoods, you have to go home right away and go with your family, get all your stuff. And she listed my neighborhood as one of the neighborhoods, so that is how I came aware that the natural disaster was going to affect me directly.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Were you feeling at that time, were you pretty nervous, scared?
[00:05:27] Speaker D: Yeah. Since I was 13, I feel like I didn't grasp the situation fully, so I was like at the start, I was like, this doesn't really seem like that big of a deal. But then right when I got down to my neighborhood, I was like, oh, my God, this is like nothing I've ever seen before.
Awesome.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: Could you describe any sights, sounds, and smells that you remember at the time? So possibly going from school to your house for sights?
[00:05:57] Speaker D: I remember just going because my school was up on a hill, and I came down the hill on Elbow Drive, and I remember just seeing water on the street, and I was like, Where's that water coming from? And I looked over the side of the bridge and it was just the river, and I was shocked. And then it just smelt like sewage water everywhere because all the sewage pipes were flooded and everything.
And this is honestly kind of sad, but as I remember getting home, I remember just hearing people crying around the house just because everyone's houses were getting destroyed by the flood.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: So did all of this happen pretty quick? Were you trapped in your house as soon as you got home?
[00:06:42] Speaker D: Yeah, as soon as I got home we had to move everything important to us out and we had to get out of the neighborhood pretty much just because with the flood there's nothing we could do. It was just coming and it was going to hit our house no matter what.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: So the flood forced you out of your house?
[00:07:01] Speaker D: Yeah, it forced us out of our house. The water was about 2ft from our main floor and all the pipes were messed up so we couldn't live there for about a year.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Could you describe what you remember happening to you after the disaster? So after you moved out of the house.
[00:07:19] Speaker D: I just remember my mom being in a lot of stress because she had to deal with the insurance with all the houses and we had to live in a tiny apartment downtown.
But no, I mainly just remember the whole family being really stressed out and everything.
[00:07:38] Speaker C: Could you describe any sight sounds or smells that you remember after experiencing the disaster?
[00:07:48] Speaker D: Well, after the disaster one of the biggest sights I remember is when we went to our house to help work on it. You just see everyone in the neighborhood helping out. Everyone, no matter what, if they saw something that needed to be helped out with, they'd come and help you and yeah, just every house was getting gutted, everything was getting taken out. It just was like a one big construction site, honestly.
[00:08:14] Speaker C: So that is pretty heavy stuff. Do you mind sharing with us what effect that had on you?
[00:08:23] Speaker D: Well, at the time I remember it making me just very worried and sad that I wouldn't get to live in my house again. But I don't know, after the fact, I think the effect it had on me just like to not take things for granted because that literally just came out of nowhere and it just happened and so many people were affected. And also I liked how it showed me that we were proud to be Albertan because everyone was helping out. Everyone.
[00:08:51] Speaker C: Yeah, very Canadian. We're looking out for Canadian brothers and sisters. On that note, could you describe what effect the flood had on other people, you know, in your community or your family?
[00:09:03] Speaker D: Well, I know definitely the flood on people that were already going through financial hardship. Like the flood pushed them over the edge and they couldn't recover and they had to change their lifestyle completely.
And also I just think it was a very traumatic experience for everyone just because people's lives literally got destroyed.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: Did the flood make you feel a different way about climate change at the time?
[00:09:32] Speaker D: Not at the time, just because I don't think I fully understood what climate change was but now that I'm older, I definitely see that climate change probably had some implications with the flood as it is just a natural disaster and climate change what it is, it makes the weather, all types of weather, just more extreme. So, yeah, I definitely believe there's a correlation between it now.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: Thank you for sharing that with us, Jake.
What happens to a person during a disaster can be affected by how much help they get. That's why we would like to ask you these questions. Could you describe the help you received during the flood?
[00:10:13] Speaker D: Most of the help we received was just from neighbors because pretty much the street was just taking it house by house. The whole street would just help out one house, move on to the next, move on to the next. And then I also remember just like, all the local restaurants and stuff, helping everyone out, making food for everyone, and you just go down and get free food and stuff.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Could you describe the help you would have wanted to get during the flood, but you didn't?
[00:10:44] Speaker D: This is kind of extreme, but I guess just from the government, I feel like it was just all community members helping out. No government officials were actually in the neighborhoods helping out, as I remember.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: Interesting, just moving past the disaster. Could you describe the help you received after the flood in terms of your house in Roxborough? Did you ever get to move back in?
[00:11:08] Speaker D: Yeah, the insurance covered it, so they helped us out and then we got it renovated and moved back in again. But no, the flood like another effect. This just reminded me of it, but the flood literally lowered value on every single house in that neighborhood after it happened just because people were worried about it happening again.
[00:11:31] Speaker C: That just adds to the stress of what's already going on.
So to add on to that note, could you describe the help you may have wanted to receive after the flood happened?
[00:11:45] Speaker D: I don't know. That one's hard to say just because there's so many things that could have gone differently, but I think most of the help he received is probably about as much help that everyone else was getting, so I'm pretty okay with the help he received after.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Could you tell me a bit about how you helped yourself and others during the flood? It sounded like the community banded together pretty well.
[00:12:11] Speaker D: Yeah, the community definitely was the major factor in the help aspect of the flood. And I remember also just meeting up with all my friends and hanging out with them because most of my friends were in the same situation. So I remember we talked to each other and it was like, oh, I'll get through this. We'll help each other out and everything.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: So is that kind of what you did to help each other after the disaster, just to take care of each other?
[00:12:40] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. Just reassure everyone that, yeah, we understand this is a big disaster, but it's going to be for the better that we overcome it and be prepared for the next time.
[00:12:53] Speaker C: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that with us.
People who live through climate disasters often have solutions to the problems they face. That's why we'd like to ask you these questions.
What do you think could be done to help people like yourself if the flood happened again?
[00:13:10] Speaker D: I just think that we need to have what we do now, have a permanent plan and action for the flood because no one knew how to deal with it when it first happened. So now I feel like if we had a response team and everything, we could go to the communities that needed it the most right away. And if we had a lot of people, we could actually get things done really quickly and help out a lot of people.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: What do you think could be done about the climate change that is increasing the frequency and intensity of these kinds of disasters?
[00:13:41] Speaker D: Well, I'm pretty sure I don't know if it's the main cause of floods, but a big one is deforestation because the trees in the forest retain so much water and the water won't come down to the rivers. So I believe that needs to change. We can plant more trees and rebuild our forests after all these forest fires because there's so many trees in the mountains and that actually has such an effect on mitigating floods.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: So, looking back on the flood, how do you feel about it now?
[00:14:16] Speaker D: Looking back on it, I guess I just realized how crazy of a time that was, because as I said before, at the time, I don't think I really realized how big of a natural disaster that was. But now looking back on it, I realized that and I don't know, I'm honestly in a half a glass half full view. I'm glad it happened. Just like now our province knows that this is a big threat and this could definitely happen and affect so many people. So I'm just glad that we know what to do now or have an idea, at least, of what to do.
[00:14:53] Speaker C: So would you say that's what brings you hope for the future if another disaster like a flood like this struck?
[00:15:00] Speaker D: Yeah, that and how the community banded together, that just brings me hope as well.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: You. That was Jake Badell, a survivor of the 2013 Calgary Floods.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Next up on this episode of the Climate Disaster Project, we are also focusing on the 2013 floods, however, in a town about 40 minutes away from Calgary called High River.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: The town of High River was drastically affected by the summer floods of 2013, causing many individuals to lose not only their valuables, but their homes as well.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Highwood river reached a record breaking flow rate, overflowing its banks and flooding the town. The flood forced the evacuation of people and damaged 6300 structures, including 5400 homes. Alison Arbick sat down with me to discuss the experience she had with the flood and how it affected not only her, but her friends and community.
Could you tell me about who you are?
[00:15:57] Speaker E: Well, my name is Allison Arbic. I am mum to Bailey Arbic, and I am a key account manager with Fortis Alberta.
[00:16:05] Speaker F: For my next question, could you tell me about the work you were doing before the flood happened?
[00:16:09] Speaker E: I work for a power company. I actually work for Fortis who provides all the distribution power throughout the province in rural Alberta.
[00:16:18] Speaker F: Could you tell me about what you.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Were most often doing other than work.
[00:16:21] Speaker F: Before the disaster happened?
[00:16:23] Speaker E: What I was doing most often other than work? I have a sewing business on the side. I enjoy sewing for other customers or other people, and I also enjoy spending time out in the wilderness and camping. We do a lot of camping down in the States and BC.
[00:16:41] Speaker F: Could you tell me about the people that you were living with at the time of the flood?
[00:16:46] Speaker E: Well, I was living with my husband, Wayne Arbeck and my daughter Bailey. We live out in the country south of High River, Alberta.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Could you tell me about the people you most often took care of at.
[00:16:57] Speaker F: This time of the flood?
[00:16:58] Speaker E: Do you mean during the flood or before the flood? During the flood, most of the people that I took care of, I was taking care of my family. And I was also helping a lot of individual staff members of Fortis Alberta because we had roughly around 20 to 30 staff members who were completely flooded out at the time with Fortis Alberta in the High River area, as well as helping some local friends who also lost some of their businesses.
[00:17:27] Speaker F: Could you go off of that? And could you tell me who took care of you during this time?
[00:17:31] Speaker E: We were really okay. Actually, we were very lucky. We had a little bit of damages, but we were able to sufficiently take care of ourselves during that period.
[00:17:43] Speaker F: And could you tell me how old you were at the time this happened?
[00:17:48] Speaker E: 2013, so it is 2022. So that's seven.
I was 40, I think.
[00:17:57] Speaker F: 40, that sounds about right.
[00:17:59] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:18:00] Speaker F: So to continue on with that, could you tell me how you came to be in High River during the time of the flood?
[00:18:08] Speaker E: Well, it is my community. I live in the area. I live around High River.
What happened was our company basically shut down during that window and we all volunteered to go right into town and help people out, get them disconnected because the basements had all of their electrical panels and their meters within the water. So we had to shut them all off and help them figure out how to get themselves reconnected.
[00:18:38] Speaker F: Could you tell me about High River, what it was like before the disaster happened.
[00:18:42] Speaker E: It was very vibrant. It was a really nice, we'll call it a farm community.
Lots of local families, lots of really nice businesses, lots of mom and pop clothing know, a cute little small town, main street. It was a very cute town, very vibrant, lots of new immigrants coming in helping work at cargill and the local businesses.
[00:19:08] Speaker F: Could you tell me during this time where were you staying when it happened?
[00:19:14] Speaker E: Actually, I was literally driving home from work. Well, first I was at working Calgary because I worked downtown Calgary, and we were literally hearing sirens and gravel trucks racing down the road into the Calgary corps because it was starting to flood. And that was at about noon Calgary time. And all of a sudden we were told, you need to get home, you need to get out. And so then I left at about 130 ish 02:00 in the afternoon, and I was racing home. And highway two was literally just as I was hitting high river, water was starting to wash over from the highwood pass or the highwood river was starting to splash over the main highway before I got home.
[00:20:00] Speaker F: Go off of that. I know you explained a little bit about how you were told to go home super quickly, but can you describe how you became aware of how the flood was happening?
[00:20:13] Speaker E: Our company actually the issue was with the flood, it rained and rained and rained and rained for a full solid week prior. And what that did was it melted the ice pack up in the mountains too fast. And typically that melt runoff takes the whole summer. And everything got washed out within a week, faster than any time typically through the year. And so we had concerns. The media had started talking about potential flooding, but nobody knew that it was going to be to the extent it ended up being on that date. And it just became an emergency. And companies were notified if you were in the downtown core, you need to get out or from your homes in the area. And we just left.
[00:21:00] Speaker F: Could you describe what you remember happening to you during the flood?
[00:21:07] Speaker E: I was racing home. I was worried about getting to you, actually, because you come home on the bus. And I was worried being we live out in the country, that the buses wouldn't be able to get down the roads and then you would be trapped on the other side because we have multiple rivers around us that were flowing pretty high. So I literally got across the highwood river fine on highway two, and then I raced on down the highway and started going down to our roads on Conomera because we had to take a bit of a different route. And then when I got to Conomera, you were just literally on the bus. And we have a little creek called Mosquito Creek. And when I say it's a creek. It's barely a creek. It's dry, it's a trickle, and it was literally a raging river over top of our concrete bridge.
You would never expect it. It had to have been at least 15 to 20ft above or from the ground up past the bridge, because it was starting to lick over top of the bridge. And your bus driver almost wasn't going to come across it, I think. Did I race across it? I can't even remember.
[00:22:22] Speaker F: I believe that I had to come and walk across.
[00:22:25] Speaker E: No, I thought I drove. I think I drove across the bridge. This is a few years back, and literally I got across, picked you up, came home, and connemara, which is kind of like right beside it was literally washing out. Like the river had gotten so big, there was no bridge there. And then we got home, and we're on top of a hill, a very large hill, and you don't hear anything. I opened the back door and the window, and it was a raging river. You could hear it thundering from where we lived.
[00:23:00] Speaker F: Yeah. And to go off of that, I do remember how loud the river it was.
[00:23:05] Speaker E: It was insane.
[00:23:08] Speaker F: Could you describe any sights, sounds, or smells that you remember from the flood?
[00:23:12] Speaker E: It's a noise.
It was the rage, like a mosquito creek. It's like a trickle. It's like a rock bed, just like it was out in canmore when you looked on the news that it was a rock bed and it was a total river. It was by far the craziest thing I've ever seen. And then we go down the road, and our neighbor, his whole farm field was completely flooded from mosquito creek, and there was just a little hill, and there was like some of his herd of cattle stuck on it because they couldn't escape. Everything happened so fast, nobody was prepared for it.
And then hearing calls from friends like, oh, my god, my car just washed away in high river. They were literally racing out of TD bank, telling them to get out, and they didn't do any warning for high river, and people were trying to drive away and their cars washed away.
It was pretty intense.
[00:24:10] Speaker F: Could you describe what effect the flood had on you?
[00:24:14] Speaker E: Well, for us, we were very blessed. We didn't have anywhere to the same extent that people like our friends in high river had. But we did have so much water because we live on a well system, and our water levels are really good, and they actually supply a lot of water. What happened, though, was with all this raging water from these rivers, the water tables rose, and it literally cracked our piping that provided the water into our house. And we didn't know it at the time. After a couple of days, or maybe it was 24 hours, 48 hours, I can't remember, we go outside and we could hear trickling we could hear water running and we don't have a river or creek or anything near us except it was scary. It were like we were seeing water and we're like, what? And we found out that our pipes had cracked and so there was a financial hit, but I can't complain. Comparative to other people out there, we were very blessed.
[00:25:18] Speaker F: Can you describe the effect the flood had on people?
[00:25:21] Speaker E: You know, oh, devastation, absolute devastation. Like one lady, Candice or Candy, she's a really good friend of mine that I worked with for quite a few years. Her and her husband are a little bit older in their almost retirement age at the time. And they had literally lost their daughter in a helicopter crash. She was in the army literally a year or two earlier. And then all of a sudden this flooding happened in High River for her and completely washed out their house in the basement, everything on the main level. And it shifted the house enough on the foundation that they had to rebuild all the exterior walls on the house where it got hit. And their insurance company made them jump through hoops and basically were going to deny them any coverage. And the government lost their file multiple times for the financial aid support that the government was giving them. It was a tough time.
[00:26:27] Speaker F: It definitely was.
So could you describe what effect the flood had on the community?
[00:26:35] Speaker E: It changed it, I can tell you right now, there was multiple families that either got divorced, walked away from this is from the High River. I mean, by High River itself, we're not even talking Calgary.
It changed the face. We lost the whole downtown core. There was no small town strip of businesses anymore. All of that was gone. The whole center core of High River was completely flooded. There was no more businesses, there was no more homes. Well, there was homes, but they were completely destroyed.
I think it also pitted the well to do families against people that were maybe middle class or lower income families because the ones that screamed the loudest, which were mostly the wealthy farmers and ranchers, they got their money and they got themselves either moved or bought out. Whereas everybody else was racing around to try to even get their insurance to cover, just getting them back to where they were. And a lot of them never did. A lot of men had heart attacks from it because they were working so hard and they were stressing and it caused a lot of trauma to families, a lot of divorces, and a lot of men having heart attacks for sure.
[00:28:00] Speaker F: So to take the bigger picture into proportion, how did the flood make you feel about climate change?
[00:28:08] Speaker E: I think I've always felt like the environment was changing and the climate is changing. Can we say it was fully climate change? I can't answer that because I'm not a climate expert, to be honest, I want to be very careful how I approach that.
I do feel it did play a factor in it. The heavy rains, it was bottom line, it was heavy rains. It washed the snow off the mountains. That is why we flooded. But we were unprepared in the fact that we didn't have dams or lagoons. And the way we built some new overpasses in High River that blocked the flow of water was the main cause of this.
[00:28:48] Speaker F: Could you describe the help you would have wanted during the disaster but didn't get?
[00:28:52] Speaker E: I don't think I needed any support, to be quite honest. I was fine. I don't feel that I needed there were so many other people that needed it.
[00:29:01] Speaker F: Could you describe the help you received after the flood?
[00:29:04] Speaker E: I didn't, because I didn't submit any applications for insurance claims or financial aid. We just paid it out of our pocket to continue.
[00:29:13] Speaker F: Could you describe the help you would have wanted to receive after the flood but didn't?
[00:29:20] Speaker E: I wouldn't have expected any, to be quite honest.
Our insurance companies could have stepped up to the plate and checked on people, but now we're all paying the price for this flood. Financially, it's becoming a burden on our insurance.
Even if you didn't get flooded, now we're getting strapped with those costs. Even living in the area now, we pay twice as much as we used to.
[00:29:43] Speaker F: Could you tell me about how you helped yourself and others during the flood?
[00:29:47] Speaker E: So as soon as the flood happened, we were on vacation. We immediately came back knowing it was happening. And we immediately got all of our trailers out, trucks and immediately went to High River to start cleaning out. As I mentioned earlier, we were helping a couple of the families that I work with just get their basements cleaned out. There was like ten to 12ft of sludge and garbage in people's basements, if not even into their main part of their houses. It destroyed them. So we were taking garbage to the dump. We were unshuveling it out of their basements and helped them get down the road of starting to repair because they were all in shock.
[00:30:29] Speaker F: Yeah.
Even at a young age, I definitely.
[00:30:32] Speaker E: Remember that candy was in pretty much she was in total shock.
[00:30:37] Speaker F: Could you tell me about how you helped yourself and others after the disaster?
[00:30:41] Speaker E: I don't know. I just continued to always be there for our friends and help them whenever.
[00:30:47] Speaker F: I needed to, to continue on with that. What do you think could have been done to help people like yourself if the flood happened again?
[00:30:55] Speaker E: I think we just have to be more prepared. I think we have to be again, it's really hard for an individual family to be prepared for a full house flood. I think it's more federal and provincial preparedness, where we have to be able to build. We go back to building. Dams and preparing the cities to have pumping stations and stuff like that prepared for them.
[00:31:17] Speaker F: So what do you think could be done about the climate change that's increasing the frequency and intensity of these kind of disasters?
[00:31:25] Speaker E: I think everybody's carbon footprint needs to change. I think we can still live within our means. I think we can just do it a little different. But we cannot burden all families with these costs because it's so expensive to become environmentally friendly. Whether that's packaging for food, whether that's less hydrocarbons in fuel and how we do that. But it's a big topic. That's a hard one to answer. I mean, we need to be smarter about what we do. We need to not pollute into the environment. We need to recycle as much as we can.
[00:32:00] Speaker F: Yeah, I definitely agree on that. So looking back on the flood, how do you feel about it now?
[00:32:06] Speaker E: It took a lot of years to even bring it back to where High River is today. And you know, and I know High River is not the same.
[00:32:13] Speaker F: No.
[00:32:13] Speaker E: I think we lost a lot of families that decided to be in these communities, aren't smart or wise to live there anymore, but I think they slowly come back. But it's been from 2013 to 2022, what, ten years almost. It'll be ten years this year. I would say we're almost there, but we still have to be prudent of what's been built and repaired from the federal and provincial government wise, because we will flood again if we don't.
[00:32:47] Speaker F: So to end off on a higher note, so what brings you hope for the future?
[00:32:55] Speaker E: The youth, because your age students are being more I guess it's very stylish to be very environmentally friendly, eco friendly.
I just see bigger things for you guys and I see for the next generation after that even more conscientious awareness of the environment.
We're getting past a lot of that generation that didn't believe the environment has any impact. I think you're going to see more smarter decisions.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: That's Allison Arbick, a survivor of the 2013 High River floods.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to Weathering the Storm stories of the Climate Cris from Alberta and around the world. I'm Riley Fonger.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: And I'm bailey. Arbic. The series is powered by Shaw and a part of the Community Podcast initiative based out of Mount Royal University.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: It was produced on the lands that are home to the Nitsutipi ayahe Nakota Sutina and METI people. We recognize the stewards of these lands and we hope to contribute to a better understanding of our environment by sharing the stories of those affected by climate change.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Special thanks to our partner, the Climate Disaster Project, and to Jake Badell and Alison Arbrick for joining us. You can learn more about the climate disaster
[email protected].
[00:34:19] Speaker B: Be sure to subscribe to the show to hear the latest Weathering the Storm stories of the climate cris from Alberta and around the world. And discover new podcasts from the Community Podcast Initiative at thepodcaststudio CA.
