You may have seen this on our office cam...
Well, we had to leave because of this...
Here is a good summary video..
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It came out of no where. There has been a lot of rain lately. Where we are situated is at the base of the Rocky Mountains. There is a river called The Bow which is a glacier runoff of beautiful clean water from the Rocky's. The river is also fed by a few other rivers and lakes from north and west of the city.
This is what Calgary normally looks like...
Yesterday we were aware that the river had risen quite a bit. Alan and I were preparing to go to the gym when an officer came to our office and handed us an evacuation notice. There are a few dams up stream from Calgary that are unable to hold the water back any longer. They will be opening the damn and there was a concern that the city would flood.
Well, they were right... and no one expected what had happened.
I woke up this morning to this... Here is a short video from my iphone of in front of my house, and next to our office. My home currently has intermittent electricity, no gas, no hot water, no heat, and no drinkable water. Sirens are on constantly as fire trucks and police patrol the city.
We live in a beautiful city. I'm so grateful to watch the entire city work together. As homes are evacuated, everyone is offering couches to sleep on. With hundreds of thousands of people without a home and many without power, there have been no casualties. I'm very proud of our city!
Here are some photos that I had taken today near my home.
The Canadian Geese are happy
This is a very sad part. It's entirely emotional and hurts my heart. There is a great deal of destruction everywhere, however... This is the "stampede grounds". Also home of our NHL hockey arena for the Calgary Flames. The arena and grounds include historical material, such as trophies, jerseys, certificates and more. Generally, a long list of athletic records and awards. The arena (Saddledome) is currently filled with water up to the 10th row! All electronics, jumbo-tron and more are destroyed.
Now... here's facebook pics from other sources...
Here's some news sources with videos:
- http://globalnews.ca/news/661628/aerial-analysis-of-flooding-in-the-calgary-area/
- http://bizboxtv.com/calgary-flooding-2013-flood-pictures-video/
I would have thought that some of you guys building robots would be leaning to the preservation and monitoring side of robotics ...like water proofing, battery backup, robust housing and my biggie , never have to turn my bot off, backups of the backups.
o and I never intend, cause or like ill will to anyone and sympathize with all people of our planet that have woes but as you might have noticed I am a very realistic person and believe that all things happen for us to learn from like , DJ should consider selling that location and build the next office on higher ground because that area IS going to flood again!
Thank God we are not all the same or better yet like ROBOTS!
i'm done...............
I'm very confident that our office is going to be alright. Our office is in the flooded area, but I don't think the water will reach it, magically. We may be really, really, really lucky...
From this post today: http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2013/06/22/military-comes-to-the-rescue-of-new-threat-to-inglewood/
It looks like the flood area in red will continue to miss our office by a tiny little bit. I'm confident the army's placement of concrete barriers will divert the water before it raises much higher in our area. I know it has flooded to the back door, and today it seems to have gone down. Tonight will be the big test!
I sympathize with you DJ.
Thanks God your dream is not going to be damaged DJ!
And like Putt Putt, I too like to watch the it do down. If you see a bad thing happen enough you're more prepared to handle it. There's been at least 2 times in my life where I've had the opportunity to freeze and die or move and live and I just went into what you could call "Movie Mode".
As for lecturing? You carry on brother Dave. You've every right to your opinion. And I'll be honest I agree with you on the lack of social decency and general grace. I know they say "judge not", but what is judging but a comparison against a standard? And without standards you have no quality. Feel free to judge me, I know I'm flawed. But I don't gloat when I'm right and I own up to my mistakes. Because mistakes are just bricks in the road of learning.
That was my lecture. Thanks for putting up with me. Thanks for being the best internet community I've ever been involved with.
Alan