The heaviest floods in decades shut down the Canadian oil capital of Calgary on Friday, closing roads and bringing down bridges across southern Alberta, and forcing tens of thousands of residents to leave their soggy homes. There were no reports of deaths or injuries, even as people retreated rapidly from flooded areas by road, boat or helicopter.
"The fact that we have to the best of our knowledge not one single injury is nothing short of a miracle," Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi told a news conference. "Last night I saw the river run faster and higher than I have ever seen in my life." Around 100,000 people of Calgary's 1.1 million residents, were ordered to leave their homes, while smaller communities were evacuated elsewhere in the Western Canadian province.
City authorities said the downtown core of Calgary would be evacuated completely on Friday. More than 100 millimetres (3.9 inches) of rain has fallen in some parts of southern Alberta in just two days, and forecasters say the rainfall won't let up until Saturday. "The flooding situation is very acute in the foothills and the mountains," said Chris Scott, director of meteorology at The Weather Network, noting that 220 millimetres, nearly half a year's worth of rain, had fallen in 36 hours near Canmore in the Canadian Rockies. "Now all that water is rushing downstream and that's why the situation is so bad in Calgary. This is an unprecedented flooding event."
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