City crews are working to shore up riverbanks eroded and ripped apart by last year's flooding and communities across southern Alberta are making plans to prepare for this year’s runoff.

Private and public property was heavily damaged in Calgary and many other communities in last June’s floods and some residents and business owners are still rebuilding.

The City of Calgary says it has learned a lot since then and has established a program to review its flood response measures and mitigation efforts to reduce and manage river flood risks in the future.

The Director of Water Resources says the city has undertaken a number of initiatives to refine how it responds to floods in the future:

  • Fixed critical areas of riverbanks
  • Have 5000 cubic metres of large rock on hand to repair river banks if necessary
  • Also have 3.2 kilometres of flood tube
  • 50,000 sandbags and additional pumps to deploy if needed
  • Doubled the number of river engineering staff in Water Resources to monitor conditions
  • More training for staff to help them respond to flooding and other emergencies
  • Developed 13 flood scenarios to staff respond to flooding.

The Haskell’s house on Home Road was spared in the floods last year but the riverbank near their home was heavily eroded.

“Before it was a nice garden.  It was like a retreat and all of a sudden it got, after the flood we ended up with 12 feet of lawn and a 12 foot bank,” said Merril Haskell.

Almost 14 meters of the Haskell’s property washed away and their fence still hangs over the bank.

Crews and heavy equipment are working nearby to strengthen the banks.

“It is an area of the Bow River that impacted the bank that is directly below 11 homes and so clearly we want to ensure those homes are protected from future erosion. The province stepped in and identified that as a critical spot right away and asked the city to make that a priority as well,” said Chris Arthurs from the City of Calgary.

The city is working to get six high priority sites on the river shored up before the spring runoff starts.

There are nearly 190 projects on the to-do list, some are already underway, and include fixing more areas on the river that were changed significantly by flood waters.

“There are those points where the river had changed enough that we felt there needed to be some shoring up or some armouring along the banks,” said Arthurs.

Some homeowners have already begun their own mitigation measures.

Philanthropist and businessman Allan Markin, who was also appointed to the provincial flood mitigation panel last year, has built a wall around his home for flood protection.

 “The city has encouraged homeowners to do what they can to protect their own property. The city’s mandate and where we're at at the city is not protecting individual private property,” said councillor Brian Pincott.

There have been no complaints so far but it is raising some questions about the affect it could have if water comes through.

“For every action that we take there is an impact, either upstream or downstream or across the stream,” said Pincott.

Former High River Mayor Emile Blokland spoke out about what happened last June and says he was looking for words to give proper meaning to how bad the damage was.

On Tuesday, he talked about the massive flooding in Wallaceville and the damage done to homes there and in other areas like Hampton Hills.

He says the emotions started running high, not just for him but for other people in the town, when the water receded and the devastation became clear.

Blokland spoke about an exchange with a few dozen homeowners who were angry at the fact that they weren't allowed to go back to their homes and said he understood their frustration. He conceded that communication with some homeowners was lacking in the days and months of mitigation that followed.

“A lot of these folks needed to get back to their homes and they could understand the evacuation but they just wanted to get back for medicine or to pick up a vehicle or to get some clothes or things of that nature and we didn't have a system in place to be able to deal with that. And that was one of the big learnings for me and we 've really talked about how we can do that better if that ever happened again to be able to escort people back and forth through the community. We weren't ready for that. We weren't ready to have people out of the community for nine days either. That was something unique for any community,” said Blokland.

The Town of High River is holding an event on June 20th to recognize the devastation done and the rebuild that's happened since.

(With files from Rylee Carlson)