Unfortunately you’ve been inconvenienced, stricken, experienced, or were surprised by a major emergency event. For one, that’s unfortunate that you’ve experienced that either directly or indirectly.
Common question during a major emergency event is “when will this be over?” followed by it’s brother/sister question at the end of the event “so how long is this going to take?” to get back to normal, so that I can go back home, to work, to the next town, to the grocery store etc. The list is as long as your imagination can conjure and most likely even longer than that.
Friends, family and colleagues of Calgary, Alberta experienced the worst flooding that province has ever seen. Some are estimating that for most, life may return to “normal” (as close as it can be in the short term) for most people affected by the Calgary floods within the next week or so. Here is my estimation as to when that area will really be back to “normal”. Years. It is going to take several years for it to be back to normal.
Here’s why. The cursory clean up will take a couple of days, other inspections of buildings and infrastructure may take a couple of weeks just to be certain, residential homes extremely damaged may take a couple of weeks to months to either be repaired, demolished and then rebuilt and so on.
Business of the city are losing money by the minute and unfortunately if they’re not prepared for or can ride the wait out, many could go out of business.
It’s the beginning of summer, warm and warmer days are ahead, the odd rain shower (hopefully not so much) to come in the following months. So there may be an upside to dealing with the majority of this disaster in historically nicer weather.
But where is all of the damaged material going. The current domestic and commercial waste sites and depots will only be able to manage so much, we may start to see temporary locations being used as landfill drop off stations. Ask any Torontonian what temporary drop off sites are like in the summer months as they experienced a couple of years ago and I’m quite certain not one description or recollection will be rosey. So, where is all of the damaged material going, what’s going to happen to it? It’s going to sit, there, it’s going to stink, we may begin to create many standing water areas, attract vermin into areas not traditionally frequented or inhabited by. So the next level of risks begin.
Environmental risks, risks of a damaged economy and so on.
Here is my silver lining. At the beginning of this emergency there were many agencies both private and government already working openly and behind the scenes to be as best as they could be one step ahead of the emergency. In my opinion they’ve done a fantastic job and their efforts should be applauded.
What I’m further certain about is that plans to mitigate the potential new risks and hazards are already being looked at and worked through, and at the end of the day, even though it may still take a couple of years to be completely out of the woods on this event, they will do fine.
It has all boiled down to one simple phrase; Plan the Work, Work the Plan.