A few Sundre businesses are dealing with losses as a result of overland flooding after the Red Deer River breached its banks last month.
“I've had to refund a lot of deposits for people,” said David Todd, owner of Otter Rafting. He said there have been roughly 50 refunds.
“I've been through it before and I've accepted it's just part of working with the natural world,” he said.
This is the second consecutive year that the business has suffered, because of the oil spill last year, he said.
Otter Rafting is a tour company in town that takes people down the Red Deer River on rafts.
The company suffered from a loss of nearly two weeks where it wasn't allowed to be on the river. However, it is back on the river now and has been for almost two weeks.
He says the constant reminders and warnings on the radio about “staying away from rivers” have not helped business.
Also, the river has changed as a result of the flood, creating new river channels and logjams. He says he now has to find alternate routes to conduct trips down the river.
He also says that most of the phone calls he is receiving for bookings or information about the business start with “is it safe?”
Several other businesses have been forced to close their doors during this difficult time, including the Sundre Hotel and the Coyote Creek Golf & RV Resort, just west of town.
Dean McBride, the director of golf for the resort, says the business is close to suffering a loss of half a million dollars, as a result of the June flood.
He said the flood has been the worst one yet for the business.
The damage to property belonging to the business is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands and the loss of revenue from being shut down is estimated to be the same.
“We're probably looking at close to half a million,” said McBride.
“The biggest thing right now is this is our prime golf season. We missed the long weekend, we've obviously lost some tournaments that just weren't able to reschedule,” he said.
However, he is hoping for a busy end to the year, to help the business recover.
“2005 was nothing compared to this, as far as how we were affected. This is by far the worst one that we've seen yet,” he said.
“But you know, everyone is teaming together, coming together and working hard and I think everyone just wants it to be back to normal. And we're doing our best to get it back to normal as quickly as we can.”
He said people that have been volunteering time are working up to 14 hours a day.
There is going to be some insurance claims and possibly some funding to help the business recover, he said.
“There's been some great days for cleanup, but they would have been great golf revenue days as well.”
The golf course has been closed for nearly four weeks.
“It was four days before we were actually even allowed in here, because obviously the road had washed out, so we went four days with not really knowing what was going on,” he said.
“The golf course, everything has been shut down. We did reopen the kitchen for business on June 29 on limited hours. The pro shop is now open and we're probably roughly about a week away from nine holes and roughly two weeks from 18 holes,” he said, adding that the opening date is weather dependent.
Despite the devastation, staff members have been pulling together and working to get the course back up to par.
“A lot of the big cleanup was obviously with machinery, skid-steers and that type of thing, where now a lot of it is the fine cleanup. It's raking and shovelling and that type of stuff,” he said.
The business has also been receiving help from locals and people with memberships to the course.
“From where it was when we first saw it, to where it is now is amazing, it's starting to look like a golf course again,” he said.
“But there's still some wet areas and tough areas that will keep us delayed for a little bit longer yet.”
Most of the damage to the course is from river silt and gravel.
“We didn't lose any holes or any greens; everything is still intact, it's just a huge mess to clean up,” he said.
“Probably 70 per cent of the holes have some sort of effect.”
The RV Park has also suffered and is a huge mess; he says a lot of landscaping needs to be done on the property.
There is debris left behind from the river in all areas of the business's property, he said.
“We've been finding everything from propane bottles to barbecues in the trees that had kind of washed away and stuff daily,” he said.
When the course was being evacuated, he said it was an “all too familiar scene”, as it is the third time it has happened.
“It's kind of a feeling of helplessness. You're evacuating, the water is going over the property and all you can do is wonder when you get in there, how good or how bad is it going to be?” he said. “It all happened so fast, from nothing around, to water coming over the road.”
“I think it had everyone in shock. It went from kind of a rainy day to ‘we're going to flood, get out'. It was pretty intense and I think pretty surprising for a lot of people.”
He is hoping that some kind of work will be performed on the river to help prevent such a situation from happening again.
“We're hoping that obviously something is done as well, taking that one step further to prevent this from happening down the road,” he said.
“I think a lot of people are wondering ‘when is something going to be done to prevent this' and not so much on our end, but further up the river.”
However, he said he is trying not to be negative about the situation and that the staff has been maintaining a positive atmosphere.
“We appreciate everyone's patience and understanding of what's happened here and we want to thank everyone. We're going to get back to business here as soon as possible. Life will be normal here at Coyote Creek,” he said.
“It's one of those things where we were down, but we're going to be back up.”
