MLA Pat Stier: a hands-on first-person account of flooding in southern Alberta

Livingstone-Macleod MLA Pat Stier

Chris Davis, Pincher Creek Voice

Livingstone Macleod MLA Pat Stier was in Lundbreck for a meeting when the storm broke, the same storm that caused so much damage to areas of southern Alberta. Since then he's, by his own account, been a very busy man. He dropped by the Pincher Creek Voice office yesterday, July 4, to update us on what he's been up to, his impressions of the event, and other things on his mind like cuts to the Persons with Developmental Disabilities budget. He was in Pincher Creek for a meeting with Town Council that had been scheduled before the disaster struck.

In his own words:

"I sent out requests to all Municipalities, school boards and Chambers of Commerce to meet with them this summer," he explained, "To get reacquainted and/or up to date with what's been going on since I last saw them."

"I've been here in the past two weeks, despite the flooding, three times. I was down here in fact, not last Saturday, but the past Saturday to see what was going on in the area. I did a quick fly-through here after what was going on in Black Diamond Turner Valley, and High River to make sure Blairmore was not totally wrecked, and see what was going on in Pincher Creek, Cowley, and Fort Macleod."

"I did a tour through Fort Macleod with Mayor Shawn Patience. We walked across the bridge and saw some of the flooding on the south side. He pointed out various things that they had done in the past few years to fix different things that had taken place before."

"He mentioned that there was certainly not much of a warning that this one was coming up."

Stier said they talked about the Oldman Dam as well. "When they open the dam, how that should take place, and so on and so forth. I've not been involved with that dam before, so it was kind of an interesting talk."

"Despite the fact that I've been designated as the SRD critic for our opposition party, there's a lot of things I haven't been privy to, shown, or made aware of. A lot of things that I've been looking into for the past year already. A lot of things have never come to my plate yet. It's something I've got to answer.. How much warning did ESRD get, or whoever's responsible for these things?"

"It's not just the dam, it's all of the headwaters for these major streams throughout Alberta. How long do they get? I don't know that answer."

Stier said he was pleased to learn Pincher Creek was virtually unscathed by the disaster.

"I was unable to contact to Mayor, but I did get hold of Reeve Bjorn Berg. We exchanged a lot of thoughts on the telephone. He was going one way, I was going another. He let me know what the stats were for his area (MD of Pincher Creek #9) while he was on the phone , and for Pincher as well."

"Then I moved over to Blairmore, and toured a couple of the problem areas over there with Mayor Bruce Decoux and his new fire chief, and the CAO Myron Thompson. In addition, I sat in on their Emergency Operations Center meeting they had that day, too. Not to participate, but just to observe."

"In my past life, as a councillor for Foothills, I worked in the operations centre as a volunteer (during the 2005 flood)."

"Two Thursday nights ago (at the height of the disaster) I volunteered for six hours at the Foothills Emergency Operations center, helping them there."

"I certainly haven't been ignoring the area, I can't go door to door, and knock on everyone's door to see how they've come through. But by going to the Municipal Councillors, and Mayors and Reeves, at least I have a bit of a source."

"It's hard. You have an image to create in your first year of your new assignment, and also a feeling for what is needed for an area, and how to get the word out the best, etcetera.

It's like any new business, you have to figure out what's right and what's wrong."

"I was actually in the area Wednesday night, when it occurred. We were having the local Lundbreck Constituency meeting."

"The rainfall was coming down pretty hard. I got over to Lethbridge about 12:30 in the morning on Thursday to get to my hotel, because out of pure coincidence, I was going to the Oldman Watershed Council meeting the next day at the big rec-plex in Lethbridge."

"By 10 o'clock I got a call from Turner Valley, they had a pipeline leak announcement, and it was felt from a party perspective that I had better get up to my own area , because there was stuff really going ape up there, that I didn't even know about, due to traveling."

"I got up there, and the whole world came apart in Turner Valley and Black Diamond."

"Of course, a lot of the people I had been working with in Foothills were working at the new Emergency Operations Center, because the old one got flooded."

"Totally flooded out."

"There is a huge misunderstanding about how much water there really was in High River."

"When the flood started here last Thursday I was up here quite a bit, and since that time I was back here down to Pincher one more time to have a quick drive through to see if everything was indeed okay."

"In the meantime I have been and continue to be working up in the Black Diamond Turner Valley area. They lost bridges up there, they lost a lot of stuff."

On Canada Day Stier was in Black Diamond for the ceremonies and then "ran over to Millarville". "I decided to do it in the north because I did Claresholm last year for Canada Day."

"Black Diamond still has a lot of suffering going on."

We discussed the present travel situation between Black Diamond and Turner Valley. "The eastern side of the bridge, the abutment onto the land, started to get underscored by the river," he explained. "They got a big hoe in there to start digging a channel to protect the bridge. So the river took another thirty metres of that. Took the whole campground out."

"The new bridge from Turner Valley comes out as a pier, then there's a thirty meter gap to Black Diamond."

"They're pushing out, re-building and compacting a new approach to the bridge."

"The road between the two towns, were you went around the curve? That got gouged out as well, over to the hillside. The road just disappeared. The road out to the south of Turner Valley, same thing. The bridge is a pier coming from the south side."

"You'll see that the guardrail's still hanging."

Stier showed me a photo on his Blackberry that showed a destroyed Black Diamond pumping station.

"In the last three days, I've been helping some seniors in their 80's who finally got access to their home three and a half days ago. We totally gutted their home in the last few days.

"I'm a sore, beat up guy from pulling up drywall, and hauling carpets, and dismantling the heating system, and everything."

"I'm tired from three days of shovelling mud."

"Southern Alberta hasn't been hit too badly, other than those three major towns. Willow Creek MD was concerned because of the weir, and rightly so. Pine Coulee Reservoir, there were a lot of things that they were checking into.

High River 7-11
Photo courtesy of Wildrose staffer

I asked Mr. Stier about his impressions of the situation in High River. "It's absolutely amazing to me," he said. "I have never seen so many things in such upheaval in one zone. If you go over near the High River Hospital, two blocks west where I was, in the southwest quadrant it's old established neighbourhoods. You look down the street, and maybe you've gone to a campground one day, and everybody's backing in at the start of a weekend and people are moving around, and there's stuff all over the place? This is that, magnified a thousand times, but instead of camping, there's people tossing junk out on the street. Furnaces, fridges, stoves, carpet, everything. There's these huge garbage trucks going up and down, vacuum trucks going up and down, every minute of the day."

"It's just something out of the movies."

"The northwest side going out to the 2A entrance to the north, I took that route yesterday. This is where the old railway used to come into town. This railway has been picked up and twisted, and turned like a ribbon. Then it sat back down, and it's like that now. There's railway ties standing up in the air, and they're still attached to the tracks. There's boats smashed laying all over the place, because there was a boat dealer right there."

"The Public Works Department for the Town, their yard is close by. There's all kind of machinery, and equipment. This is not stuff that's floated there, this is stuff that's been picked up, and smashed. It is absolutely phenomenal. I can't even express the words properly."

"It was scary"

"There is no question that High River is changed forever."

"One of the things I think is going to be the most dramatic change is this: how many people are going to be wishing to stay there?"

"Nobody has a plan right now that they can look at from the government that says their going to be reimbursed 100% for this, or partial, or 50%. We've got some disaster relief, how are they going to pay for the remaining part? Are they going to come along and make a new policy like 'yeah, we will give you a check for your place sir, but here's the caveat, you can't rebuild there'."

"What are they going to do?"

"There's so many questions that need answers."

I asked Mr. Stier what his opinion was of the work done by volunteers, RCMP and first responders during the disaster.

"I can best illustrate that by saying that when I worked at the Foothills Emergency Response Center near DeWinton, the MD of Foothills had to move to DeWinton because they had to abandon the building..."

"Even patrol cars floated away. They had nothing. So they had to go up to the new fire hall in DeWinton and resurrect the whole thing and put it together again. I helped them, and volunteered for several hours that Thursday night. In the meantime the High River Emergency component of that same system moved twice to a different facility because they couldn't operate out of the first facility in High River for fear of getting flooded out, so they went down to Nanton for a while. All these people I was sitting beside in the Foothills one, and I heard about the people in the High River one, all those staff members were showing me pictures that they were able to get of structures, buildings before they left."

"We were sitting there in shock, and they were adrenalized."

"They were doing their jobs, trying to take the calls, trying to dispatch people, some were using personal vehicles, some were borrowed vehicles, knowing that the new home that they just bought last year in High River was now submerged. A couple of the younger staff members were virtually in agony about it, but they were doing their job anyway."

"A lot of the fire personnel running in and out of the building, running to various situations, you cannot say enough about what these people did, and how they responded with very little equipment left that would work."

"Computer systems were submerged. All kinds of things were in a hellish way. One of the guys said that the communications system was thrown in the car in a hurry, they went back to get more, and in the meantime when they got back the car was already floating away."

"How these personnel kept their cool through all this was just amazing to me. I went to the Nanton Evacuation Center on several occasions throughout the weekend. Everybody pitched in, and it was just something you wanted to shed a tear about it. How much people were doing about these people."

At this point in the conversation Mr. Stier seemed, not for the first time, looking quite close to tears himself.

"The Hutterite Colony from Cayley is a prime example.  They virtually fed an army of people there, every day. They volunteered their time and resources. I went in and thanked those people so much. They did a fabulous job."

"The Town of Nanton, the staff, council and administration, everyone in the Town of Nanton came down to give a hand at the evacuation center. They were not flooded in the town of Nanton themselves, but they were there, pitching in, volunteering their buildings, and their manpower and their people. It was a fabulous thing, unfortunate as it was to be a part of."

Other topics:

I asked Mr. Stier what he thought the impact of the disaster might be on the economy. "The Alberta Economy is pretty resilient to a lot of things," he replied. "There will be some changes to the way government is looking at their budgeting, no question. How are they going to do this? What are they going to do?"

"We are not just in an area of cutback, we are in an area of going in debt for the first time in 25 years, as was announced in March with the budget. How are they going to manage this? Are they just going to borrow more?"

"There's been a couple of things that have been grinding on me for a little while."

"Isn't that amazing, that we've had people that were hired on a contractual basis to perform a task and at the same time we have the government that decided to go into debt, to build roads, and other things they believe are necessary, called infrastructure, whether it's gravel or pavement. At the same time they're going to make huge cuts to the most vulnerable people in society. I know that's a common phrasing, but it's the best way to describe the cuts to the PDD (Persons with Developmental Disabilities) program of 42 million dollars this year. Also, a significant amount of cuts throughout the whole long term care network."

"Let me put it into perspective for you. I've got 2 or 3 long term care facilities in our riding. The one in Black Diamond served Turner Valley as well. It's going to get a $400,000 cut, meaning a lot of people in long term care, and these are the facilities that have a lot of people who can't manage on their own, are going to get incredible amounts of services no longer being provided to them."

"How are these people going to live safely? How are they going to be looked after, bathed, cared for, if the government is going to cut that amount, in long term in just those two facilities?"

"Just think if you had your parents there, and the government said 'we're going to cut all this', but they didn't say what they're going to do in place of it. You'd be scared."

"I'm getting all kind of calls to the MLA office and into my email about this. People are really worried."

"Similarly, the $42 million cuts for persons with development disabilities? They announced that they were going to implement that July 1. Well, the flood came and we've forgotten, but hey, it's time to get back to that problem. It hasn't disappeared."

"Now they're admitting that they might have done a poor job of announcing how they are going to do that, so it's been given a reprieve until September 1."

"We have yet to see how they're going to manage to cut such a huge number. Just imagine. $42 million being cut out of the persons with development disabilities program and not telling people. 'Okay, now we're going to cut this, We don't know how we're going to do it afterwards, but you should be ok. Okay?'. It doesn't work for me. I think it's appalling and shocking, and people better not forget that."

"When it comes down to all this: If the government is going to go into debt, to the degree that they announced to us in the Legislature, what are the priorities? Is it roads, bridges, culverts, gravel and pavement, and cut funds to people who are needy? When does gravel come before human needs?"

"If we have to go into debt, I guess we could perhaps consider it for these kind of health services. But my God, don't go into debt and then cut the services to the most vulnerable people we have, the seniors and the people who have health issues."

"That's disgusting, it's absolutely disgusting."

"In a similar vein, we have issues right here in this community. Municipalities are strongly, strongly putting together a proposal and a package to retain their ambulance services. The government is fighting them all the way. Why? It goes back to the same vein they've had in the last three years, four years, five years, they want to centralize everything."

"You lose local control, you lose local influence, and you lose efficiency. That's being demonstrated clearly in all ways, whether it's health care, whether it's ambulance services, whether it's education."

I asked him if the recent AHS situation was part of the same problem. "Without a doubt. The AHS Board desicion as you asked earlier, that whole scenario is just another chapter in the same book. It's just another illustration of how poorly these guys have been managing the Alberta Health System. Look at the Super Board thing, and how that's falling apart, now they're onto another issue in regards with the super group. When is it ever going to end?"

"This ambulance thing started to appear 8 years ago or more, when I was still on council. They wanted to centralize the dispatch. We had local people in our area, just like here, who are tied in the same region, by the way."

"You guys have the one down here that works very well, I know. They wanted to centralize that, and suddenly from people who knew what township range and meridian meant southeast of section 2, township 6, range 3, west of 5 meant...(land descriptions used by dispatch). You go to people in some other dispatch zone that are still trying to figure out what the southeast and northwest of Calgary is. No Clue."

"It's absolutely, incredibly stupid. The whole thing needs fixing. What are the real answers to this kind of thing? Our party has been publishing an awful lot about that. I'm not an expert at it. We have some policies and strategies that we think will be more effective."

"Returning local control is the 40 thousand foot level of what our attitude is. Return local control."

"Health care has been my pet peeve for the past 3 weeks, 4 weeks. The flood has come and interrupted my thoughts, but I've been ranting about this, PDD, and long term care for quite a while.



"Three Fridays ago I toured several logging areas south of Coleman to get a first hand experience as to what takes place, and how it's done in that region. What the scope of the job is at operational status when they're actually doing it, rather than afterwards, versus a 3 year regrowth period, 6 year, 9 year, 12 year, and we actually went to a 100 year area where we can see some old stumps that were pointed out to me. They're actually now going in for their second cut, and it's re-grown there to a wonderful amount that they can harvest again. It was illustrated to me how they carefully go in depending on if there is any streams in the area. How they set back quite a distance from those, and so on and so forth."

"That was a great learning experience for me, to get first hand knowledge from the other perspective, to see how they leave a lot of the mature trees, still. Even though it is called clear cut, they still leave a lot of mature trees in there. And what these new meadows look like when they start to re-grow. That was a good experience."

"I've been responding this last spring to a lot of calls in regard to power lines and windmills."

"Certainly this spring, we had a lot of calls on wildlife issues."

"It's funny what you get across your plate in an average day, but it's quite a spectrum of topics."