By CHAT News Today

VIDEO: Flood damaged properties demolished in Flats

Jun 28, 2017 | 11:23 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — After four years, a handful of homes damaged beyond repair in the 2013 flood are being demolished.

Two homes on Elm Street were torn down Wednesday morning, while another home on Bridge Street was also demolished by crews.

The Medicine Hat Police Service have said the homes have been magnets for crime over the last four years.

Several residents of Elm Street gathered Wednesday morning to watch as an excavator tore down two homes deemed uninhabitable following the 2013 floods.

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Mike Shephard, who has lived in the area for over 20 years, brought his grandchildren to watch the demolition.

He said these homes being gone will help to improve the community.

“It’s been on all our minds,” Shephard explained. “We’ve had a few neighbourhood meetings and we’ve talked to some of the city councillors about it and everybody agrees, but nothing seems to happen, but today is the day!”

Barb Enman used to live in one of the homes being torn down, but she sold the property before the 2013 flood.

For Enman the day is filled with mixed emotions as she reminisced about the happy memories in the home.

“I loved living in that little house,” she said. “It was such a fantastic neighbourhood, the first night I moved in they made me feel really welcome and it’s sad to see it go.”

The City of Medicine Hat has been working to buy, demolish and resell 13 properties in the Flats impacted by the floods.

The city admits the process has taken a while but they’ve had to negotiate with each property owner, complete an assessment of each property and conduct any remediation work before moving forward.

“We did the acquisitions [of these three properties] in September and October of last year,” said Dave Curtis, city property administrator. “We’ve done some asbestos removal on two of the properties and now we’ve come to the point where we can actually remove the [structures] and we’ll put the properties up for sale as we have with all the other flood properties.”

Three uninhabitable homes remains standing on in the Flats.

The city said the owners refused to sell them.

Karel Mason lives across the street from the properties.

She said she hopes the demolition work encourages the owners of the last houses to do something about them as the homes have sat vacant since June of 2013.

“It’s just being torn apart, and people are coming and stealing things,” said Mason. “It’s dangerous and somebody is going to get hurt.”

While the neighbours would like to see all the uninhabitable houses gone, they hope having a few of them torn down will provide a fresh start for the community.

“There’s been some drug activity here… the city’s tried to keep the windows boarded up, but those things seem to get opened up in the middle of the night,”said Shephard. “Really glad to turn the page and get it over with.”