Crews working to prevent snow melt flooding around Medicine Hat

Bruno said the water came from the street above his unit, from melted snow that had nowhere else to go but into his basement.

“I was scared and worried, because I just moved in a week ago”, said Bruno. Jayk Sterkenburg/CHAT News

Gutters are cleared by city crews to allow catch basins to be open for draining, but not always does the method see success.

As his house is at the end of the street, Bruno’s catch basin was a few houses down, out of range from the water that had pooled up.

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Trevor Funk, manager of operations for Municipal Works in the city, said they are prioritizing water impacting travel on major roadways, and people’s properties.

“There’s water everywhere right now,” he said.

“A lot of residents are able to chip away at the gutter a bit and get water to keep flowing to the nearest catch basin,” he added.

“In some cases, we recognize that that’s maybe not possible. There’s just too much.”

Trevor Funk. Kevin Kyle/CHAT News

City crews have been working tirelessly over the past week to clear streets of melting snow, grading them overnight all last week in preparation for the warm weekend.

Bruno said that his basement had a few inches to half-a-foot of water that had flooded it.

He said that he knew he was supposed to contact the city about the flooding, after he tried the owner of the building, the manager, and even a plumber.

“I called the city, and I pressed the emergency line, and sure enough, a lady answered, and she asked me what was going on, so I told her the situation,” he said.

“She said that she’ll send out a city maintenance crew to come and investigate and see what they can do on their part.”

Bruno said that the city arrived with a grader to move the snow, and a hydrovac truck as well to get rid of the water that had pooled up.

He said that, although he believes its the city’s responsibility to prevent this from happening in the first place, he will be more prepared to call them ahead of time if it were to happen again.

“I feel the city handled the situation fairly good. They did take at least half an hour to come, but they did come,” he said.

“Apparently there was other situations that was happening that was the same kind like mine, and so they had to deal with those before they could come to my apartment.”

Funk said that the city experienced a huge weather change over the weekend.

He said that’s when potholes begin to show up as well, but crews are out at 4 a.m. filling them, to get ahead of the traffic.

Funk said that Municipal Works only has two major priorities currently, which all staff are dedicated to — snow melt drainage and filling potholes.

He said there was almost a 30 degree difference in weather change over the weekend, with the roads losing over half of the snow.

“I think we were going into the weekend with about 14 centimeters snowpack and it’s down to seven now,” he said.

“We lost it really quickly. We understand there’s water everywhere,” he added.

“We’re trying to address the issues in a prioritized way.”

Funk said that the most efficient way to report potholes and water drainage problems around Medicine Hat is through the Report a Problem section of the city’s website.

Contact can be made to the department directly as well through one of the phone numbers available on the site.

by Jayk Sterkenburg

Crews working to prevent snow melt flooding around Medicine Hat

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