CALGARY, Alberta – Calgary’s mayor said yesterday the flooding situation in his city was as under control as it could be – for now. Officials estimated 75 000 people were displaced in the western Canadian city.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the Elbow River, one of two rivers that flow through the southern Alberta city, had peaked.
And if things didn’t change, officials expected that the flow on the Bow River – which, in Nenshi’s words, looked like “an ocean at the moment” – would remain steady for the next 12 hours.
Deaths were reported, but many roads and underpasses were washed away. Downtown, water was lapping at the doors of the Saddledome, home to the National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames, and inundating homes and businesses in the shadow of skyscrapers.
Water swamped cars and train tracks An estimated 75 000 residents in 25 neighbourhoods lying along the rivers were ordered out of their homes in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics. About 1 500 went to emergency shelters while the rest found shelter with family or friends, Nenshi said.
Police urged people to stay away from downtown and not go to work.
Officials said lions and tigers from the Calgary Zoo may need to be transferred to prisoner holding cells at the downtown courthouse. (AP)
