On Sunday July 12th, 2015, the skies opened up and a storm like no other crashed down on Langdon, Chestermere and surrounding areas. With the storm cell being stuck over the area for many hours that combined with torrential rain strong lightening and the power being knocked out… it made for the perfect storm. With that perfect storm the significant amount of rain that fell, had nowhere else to go but into people’s homes.
In Langdon, Rocky View County crews and contractors started working at 6 a.m. to deal with the overland flooding problems. Rocky View Councillor Rolly Ashdown said the lightning strike that knocked out power to storm water pumps in the community’s northwest caused some localized flooding, but crews brought in emergency pumps to manage the problem.
As residents took to social media to check in with neighbours and start looking for help, they were quick to blame Rocky View County for poorly designed infrastructure as the reason for flooding basements.
But as the storm passed and the water receded, the community banded together to help one another and to ensure the quickly approaching Langdon Days still went off without a hitch. Another great show of the strength of a community.
Langdon resident, Scott Porter, told his story “I had a beautiful early morning shooting lightning and then dealing with the house flooding at 6:00AM on July 12 2015. We had 2 sump pumps running and blowing out into the back yard. But we couldn’t keep up with the sewer water flow from the 4 inch pipe shooting the water 10 inches above the concrete floor. We flooded for a total of 10″ we tried our best but some of our neighbours didn’t fair very well. It was amazing how the neighbours of Nesbitt Close *Langdon came together to help out one of the houses with 4 feet deep in water. If I remember right, they had 6 SUMP hoses running out through their front door. Great Team Work Langdonknights and to everybody else that helped some out that day”.
