For Calgarians, the flood of June 21st has receded and the process of clean-up and recovery are well underway. Yet, after a river floods, it alters the terrain of the surrounding area; some damage can be seen immediately, but other impacts may not appear for weeks or months later. In the same way, the impact it had on the lives of Calgarians may not be immediately apparent.

If you ever get a chance to look at a map of Calgary’s terrain, you’ll notice that once the Elbow river gets past 5th Street and Elbow Drive, it’s all a huge flood plane.  Essentially Mission, the Beltline, downtown, the Stampede grounds and the East Village are built on flat land created from the confluence of the Bow and the Elbow.

While the city built a huge berm along Elbow/25th Avenue in front of Safeway that successfully prevented the water from flooding into Mission or anywhere near the Beltline, it may have redirected waters back into Rideau Park, and into the home of Steve Forrest and Dion Belanger among others.

"We’ve lost everything we own in our basement," said Steve Forrest who was still very upset when I interviewed him.  "All our clothes were downstairs," said Dion. "We lost all our clothes, furniture...when we got in there, our washing machine was floating."  While they accept the berm may have sacrificed their community to protect downtown and the Beltline, it’s still a bitter pill to swallow.

However, the support that quickly appeared afterwards was heartening. "We were so lucky, thirty of our friends showed up the first day," Steve said, adding that even Mayor Nenshi showed up and looked at their basement, devastated by what he saw.

In contrast, Prime Minister Harper’s wife Laureen showed up supposedly to show support, but in reality to snap some publicity photos at flood victims’ expense.  If you heard through the grapevine that someone told Laureen off for this vulturous behavior, that was apparently Steve, who says he snatched his screwdriver away from her as they were setting up the photo shoot. "Laureen Harper...she’s a really nice lady, but she had a black shirt on with no mud on it. Come on..." At that point they were a few days into cleaning up their home at great personal expense, and they and others needed real help, not political campaign "porn".

In the northeast quadrant of Mission, a gay-owned business was hit hard by the flood.

"I have been involved in operating Calgary Westways Guest House for the last 20 years and was planning to semi-retire next year as my new junior partner Graham McKay has just invested [a large sum of money] for renovations. Our only source of income is from the revenue from the operation of the Bed and Breakfast," Says Jonathan Lloyd.

On June 20th around 5PM they received the evacuation orders and had to relocate a house full of guests. Jonathan lives and has an office in the basement – he wisely decided to move important files and the computer to the second floor, but left the first floor untouched, thinking it would not be affected.

"Graham and I decided not to evacuate that evening and we retired when the electricity went off. I awakened at 6AM to discover that the house was surrounded by water, [so I] checked the basement and saw a small amount of water. I checked the basement at 7AM and saw at least 2 feet of water rapidly rising. I checked my truck that was parked in the front of the house and saw the flood waters rising close to the exhaust pipe. I immediately moved the truck up the street out of harm’s way, returned to the house, collected our suitcases and dog, locked up and drove away with wet shoes and pants."

After setting up at a friend’s place, Jonathan worked online cancelling reservations.  They had a full house up to the end of Stampede, and reservations throughout the summer – all cancelled. "We do not have any other source of income and unsure how we will survive this disaster. Though the house and business is insured... the insurance does not cover flooding and receiving financial help from the Province and Federal government will take time."

Since then, Jonathan has been assessing the damage. They just got the electricity and natural gas back on Friday, July 5th. Inside the house, besides furniture and other items, they will have to replace a furnace and two hot water tanks. Fortunately it didn’t go any higher than the basement, but it affected things on the exterior: the sidewalk at the side of the house collapsed when the subsoil washed out, various outdoor equipment was damaged, and a large air conditioning unit has to be tested for damages. While it was heartbreaking for Jonathan, he was so grateful to the team of volunteers and friends who helped clear out the basement and started some reclamation work.

At this point he’s still assessing costs and damages, estimating a $125,000 bill for repairs. As this happened in their high season, Jonathan’s best guess is that they have lost $50,000 in revenue. While they progress on doing what work they can, they are waiting to hear back from their insurance company and are looking into governmental assistance.

Like many residents and businesses in the Beltline, Mark Campbell from The Backlot lost power over the course of several days. "[We were] shut down Thursday night (June 20) at 11 o’clock as we started getting calls they were evacuating the downtown core...when I heard it was a mandatory evacuation, I got everyone out of there so that staff could get home safely." They didn’t get back into the bar until Friday a week later.

Unfortunately, this couldn’t have come at a worse time as this was the lead-up up to the International Gay Rodeo – a time when Backlot makes a lot of money. "The week before rodeo we have a lot of people coming in from out of province...Backlot is their first stop because they hear about us on the Internet. I know we’ll be okay, but a loss of eight days sales is a lot."

The Texas lounge was in a similar situation, as were many members of the LGBT community – myself included. Many of us were fortunate to stay with friends or family while we waited for the power to come on, some of us only losing perishables in the fridge. However, what Mark’s story illustrates is how widespread the impact was – and how it’s still an ongoing development.

There was some potential long term good arising from the flood.

I stayed at the house of Brian Singh and his partner John Manzo while I waited for power to be restored. John is a well known and well liked associate professor at the University of Calgary; Brian is a market researcher, economist and business strategist with over 20 years of experience. In addition, you may have seen him on the weekly political panel on CBC Calgary’s Evening News.

Brian – with the help of other locals working on sites like Yelp, businesses like Eligeo and Lions Park Computers – started up the Facebook group Calgary Clean Up and on the web, YYCHelps.ca – two sites thousands of people have used since June 21st.

His inspiration for the website/social media push hit him early in the crisis: "12:18 AM Friday morning (June 21st) the evacuation orders went out to a lot of communities and just watching on Facebook people saying I have a room or anybody who needs a place just give me a shout... and I’m thinking I’m powerless to do anything. These flood waters are going to crest, there’s going to be a lot of damage... the only thing I can think about is that we’ve got to prepare for after the flood waters recede."

Brian thought he’s good at getting people together and motivating them, but he’s also good at content curation... and in a crisis people need information and need to know where to turn to. So he started up the Facebook group and website – and watched as people signed on in droves.

"Most importantly we were able to fulfill a need; at that one moment when people couldn’t do anything we were fulfilling the need to get them to a place that they knew they were going to make a difference." Brian realized it’s not really about the week of the flood, it’s about the months and weeks ahead when things will get hard. A lot of this came together as people started thinking about the bigger picture.

At the time of the interview, on the systems they had created they were approaching 13,000 volunteers. They had very detailed information on the types of qualifications and/or equipment these people had. Brian was impressed by how it all came together. He never thought it would happen like this as we are risk adverse society moving at the speed of bureaucracy, but "...here’s the case where we really built the kick-starter of volunteerism in 3 days." It could have sunk like a lead balloon but it seemed to have struck a chord with people - especially a lot of people who are perhaps not physical workers but have access to property materials or specific services that they can offer.

Furthermore, they heard back from people that the system made it easy for others to help out. They don’t have to go and get involved with a particular volunteer organization – which is especially good as you’re dealing with some people who may not traditionally fit within that type of framework. People were able to volunteer their particular skills as opposed to what may happen with organizations where they may be placed in a very simple position. That’s not to put down the work of established volunteer organizations – Brian and his group certainly didn’t have the experience and knowledge those people have; rather, given the urgency of the situation, they looked on it more along the lines of these people have a need, these people have a service to offer - how can we match them?

Again, this isn’t to criticize volunteer organizations and NGOs for the valuable work they do – it’s just that Brian demonstrated a novel way to respond a lot quicker and to have volunteer duties tailored to the individual needs of the volunteers. They weren’t experts, they have learned things but they were able to crowdsource information and crowdsource experts rapidly. Where Brian and his group chooses to go with this process is still up in the air, but as I watched it come together, it was an interesting example of something good that came from the flood.

Most of the damage from the flood has already been cleaned up, but it will be a tragedy that haunts Calgary for a while. While Brian and the others who started the Calgary Clean Up may have created a new model for volunteer and donation distribution, there are still other things we can do to help.

Some businesses that were impacted by the flood may not bounce back to reopen, but you can help the ones that do by patronizing them when possible and encouraging other to do so as well.  Even without water damage, being closed for several days can damage cash flow and still scuttle a business months down the line.

For family and friends who were impacted by the flood – do something.  If you can’t help them directly clean up and rebuild their lives, at least do something to make their lives a little easier: cook them dinner, treat them to a movie, pay for a session with a registered massage therapist or a day at the spa.  The flood didn’t just damage property, it also took a heavy toll on people, so helping them to cope through this time is crucial.

And for the victims of the flood, don’t be afraid to ask for help – this is the time for it.  There are literally thousands of people waiting for your call, and expecting nothing but your gratitude in return.