High River homes sacrificed during flood, says official in video

The neighbourhood of Hampton Hills was sacrificed to help drain the rest of High River when floodwaters devastated the town last month, according to a video obtained by CBC News from inside a private meeting held lastFriday for affected residents.

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"We had to sacrifice your area to try and get the other ones de-watered," Darwin Durnie, who was hired by the province to manage emergency flood operations in High River, saidtothe gathered crowd.

Residents responded with cheers, saying they were thankful that someone finally told them what happened to their community, which is not locatedin a floodway or flood fringe area.

Officials said water should have never reached the area, located on the east side of High Riverand yet it was arguably the hardest hit neighbourhood in southern Alberta.

The homes there were under water for more thanthree weeks, and many stillremainin ruins.

Roughly 27 families wereat theprivate meetingto find out more about the berms that were built around their community and how their community was affected by the decision to place them there.

Berms built to control floodwaters

In the early stages of the flooding in High River, officials decided to hastily build two berms in the area to help control the water.

Those two berms were built on Highway 543 and Second Avenue.

Albert Flootman, High Rivers director of engineering, said at a press conference today thatthe decisionon where tobuild bermswas made because of the location and depth of the floodwaters.

He said Hampton Hills happens to be beside the Little Bow diversion canal.

"The initial thought was to build a berm north of the residential area to segregrate the residential from the farm land to the north so that pumping could happen more readily, just to speed up the process," he said.

"However, the water in this area was over 12 feet deep at that point, maybe as much as 20, and it wasn't possible to build a berm in that area to segregrate the area. So,a choice was made in the field to use Second Avenueto start building the berm."

'It was simply the obvious choice'

He said billions of gallons of floodwater was then pumped out of Hampton Hills, whichhas a lower elevation than surroundingneighbourhoods,into nearby storm ponds and the river diversion canal.

Floodwaters from the nearby community of Sunrise was also pumped into Hampton Hills because it had nowhere else to go, said Flootman.

"The construction of these berms was to segregrate the different areas to enable the pumping of the residential areas more quickly," he said.

"It was simply the obvious choice."

The mayor of High River has not returned calls from CBC News andRick Fraser, the minister in charge of flood recovery for the area, declined to comment on the issue.

The confusion has created a sense of frustration for residents in Hampton Hills, many who say they want the government to buy them out so they can move from the flood-damaged neighbourhood.

• Many High River flood victims want out, Wildrose leader hears

Someresidents protested outside of Premier Alison Redford'sCalgary office Monday to demand more compensation.

Inquiry needed, says area MLA

Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith, the local MLAfor the area, saysshe would like to see a public inquiry into the issue.

"This is a community that was never supposed to flood," she said.

Smith said residents have also been stopped from being able to do their own remediations, so not much has been accomplishedalmost41 days after flooding devastated the community.

"These homes have been the worst hitwater up to the second level, they're infested with mould," she said.

"Theyre homes, by and large, that young families are in. So, Ive been sympathetic to the situation that theyre in because their damages were increased by some of the actions that government took, it appears, and Ive been encouraging the minister to offer them the ability to relocate as they do with people in the floodways."

Thefloodway program allows people to get their home's equivalent valueso they canmove, and Smith says thats what these residents are asking for. She said they wantto restart their lives, andthe governmentshould look at them as a special case.