As flood recovery gets underway, Saint John EMO is reflecting on this year’s spring freshet, and the impact it had on the city.
EMO Director Kevin Clifford says the River Watch data from this year tells quite a story.
75 homes were impacted by flood waters, and over 200 homes were isolated due to flooded roads. 14 roads had to be closed, but Clifford says they are all now open.
68 families registered with the Canadian Red Cross in Saint John as having left their homes. 14 families were provided with lodging, and 9 are still being put up.
He says the sandbag distribution program was key to help hold back water in certain areas.
City crews and volunteers filled 30,900 sandbags, and distributed 24,197. Clifford says the remaining sandbags will be shrink wrapped and stored, and will be used next year should another flood happen.
“I remember being in a conversation about three years ago, when the province as a whole, everybody was saying you can’t hold the Saint John river back. Over 60-some of our families, homes, held the Saint John River back, by virtue of our commitment to providing sandbags,” he said.
Sandbags ready to be picked up from the Bay street distribution centre on the west side of Saint John, NB.
(Photo credit: Tamara Steele)
He says there are currently 23 homes requesting volunteer help in cleaning up properties. 18 of those requests have been coordinated through the city’s flood relief volunteer program, which now has 65 volunteers.
Eight parks are currently closed due to potential contamination. They will be assessed and reopened in the next two weeks.
During the two weeks in which EMO was activated, 219 city employees were in the field, and 6,553 hours of city staff time were dedicated to flood events.
Clifford says that high level of preparedness, and a detailed EMO playbook were key in this year’s response.
“Our flood response experience of 2018, which was very good, and subsequent rehearsal this past spring, allowed for us to build a more refined, more disciplined playbook, from which to best help our community through its second consecutive flood of the century,” he said.
Clifford says despite the struggles, everyone was more prepared this year. He hopes to continue working to fine tune EMO’s response.
“Moving forward, we need to build the same robust types of playbook or scripts for all the hazard locations that are in our community. Anything less is putting the extraordinary Saint John EMO team that we have at an unnecessary disadvantage,” he said.
Once recovery efforts are done, EMO will be doing an “after action review process,” which will look at its response efforts, where improvements can be made, and what work needs to be done, such as mitigation.
