Diary: Living with a pandemic 34 (Wednesday 29 April 2020)

More attacks by Mother Nature…

If it was not bad enough to Albertans to be hit with a pandemic, many residents now face other impacts from Mother Nature by way of floods and, potentially, fires.

In several communities in the northern part of the province, ice jams caused by spring breakup, have produced exceptional flooding. Normally that might not be anything more than something rivers do, except that when those flood waters cover towns and cities it becomes a disaster.

Flooding at Fort Vermillion, Alberta - photo: Jake Fehr

In Fort McMuray, most of which was burned to the ground during an intense fire in 2016, is now reeling from water that rose quickly to rooftops. There was mandatory evacuation of most of the city this week which displaed13,000 people. There is a boil water advisory for those who remain, even if they were able to store water before the main flood hit and disrupted utilities.

 

Flooding at Fort McMurray, Alberta - photo: Shannon O'Connor-Warren

Moving people to safety is complicated, of course, due to physical distancing restrictions. Help is being offered by government and private sources, including hotels.

Dry conditions…

In southern Alberta, the normal dry spring conditions has forestry officials worried about the potential for fires. Already there have been a few grass fires, probably caused by careless smokers or other that have come close to houses. Provincial parks are closed, and all open fires are banned province wide. Since most fires are started by humans, the hope is that we will avoid any major conflagrations. Fire crews will not have the flexibility to get to work with the current quarantine situation so a full ban on access to vulnerable locations is necessary.

Areas under fire bans

 Light at the end of the tunnel?

Provinces are beginning to put in place plans to open the economy. Those regions with few cases will be among the first to allow stores and services to resume business. Alberta is in good shape, in spite of still rising numbers of cases. A new model shows that hospitalizations will be well under what could have happened had we not engaged in rigorous physical distancing.

Most outbreaks here have been in clusters which health officers have worked to contain. There have been 80 deaths in the province, 52 of them in continuing care facilities. A meat-packing plant in southern Alberta has 759 cases of the total 4,850 in the province. Another 249 cases were confirmed in a second plant, also in the southern area. If closed for a long period, they will seriously affect the supply of meat and poultry to the whole country, so there is an even greater urgency to contain the infections.

Hospitalization numbers, which are the statistic that really tell us how bad a situation is, are very low compared to the model that was constructed in early April. Only 202 people have been admitted to hospitals with Covid-19 and only 47 have had to be moved to an ICU. That is good news, if there can be any. The health department predicts that less than 300 will ultimately require hospital care.

We can expect to see physical distancing rules still in place for some time, but store owners and employees will certainly be happy to get back to work.