Local news delivered daily to your email inbox. Subscribe for FREE to the rdnewsNOW newsletter.

Red Deer city council looks back at Mother Nature’s ‘hardball’

Jun 26, 2017 | 8:26 PM

Red Deer City Councillor Lawrence Lee hit the nail on the head as it relates to last week’s massive windstorm that throttled Red Deer.

“Mother Nature really served us up a hardball,” he said at the start of Monday’s council meeting at City Hall.

What all of council was quick to recognize was the hard work of City staff, from administration to the Emergency Operations Centre to the crews on the ground and most importantly, the community for coming together during an emergency.

“Red Deerians rose up to the challenge of this windstorm. They helped each other neighbourly, and our city crews, our EMS, our regional partners all rose to the challenge and supported Red Deer,” Lee continued. “I think that shows what a great community we are and how come we are recognized so much for volunteerism across the province.”

Councillor Lynne Mulder praised staff for working around the clock.

“It was an event like I’ve never seen and I think under the circumstances, I’m really pleased with the fact that we carried on with business as usual because we knew staff were in control of the situation,” she said.

Councillor Paul Harris said the response proved we are a resilient community, adding the event should cause the City to consider what it can do to prevent such destruction in the future.

“It’s taught us where we’re not resistant. This took down a lot of power lines, but what if this happened again and again or it was an ice storm like has happened in the east? How do we change our planning and our policies to make our city more resistant?”

Harris suggests burying the power lines in more areas, something Mayor Tara Veer addressed in a recent comment on the rdnewsNOW Facebook page.

“Burying the lines is approx. 1 million dollars from large tower to large tower. To give an order of magnitude, every one million dollars spent is an equivalent of a 1% property tax increase and there are multiple kms of power lines in the city. It is cost prohibitive for cities to bury all lines,” Veer explained. “We build alternate routes instead to be able to reroute power in situations of power loss.”

What the mayor added at Monday’s council meeting is that there will be a comprehensive debrief which will look at planning and resourcing and engage the community as well.

“On the whole, the response went very well, which is in large part why we were able to restore power to Red Deerians in [a few] short days. Rebuilding the power lines in Vanier Woods alone was the equivalent of what would normally be rebuilding power for a whole subdivision,” she said.

“Everything will be put on the table. We know we are living in a time when we are faced with more extreme weather events, so even though it was an event that was unique to us, it could happen again in a couple of weeks or in a matter of years. Regardless of if and when that happens, we need to be ready to face it yet again.”