Alberta Health Services staff volunteered at emergency fund disbursement centres to help southern Alberta flood victims access financial support and supplies like water. Staff helped with tasks like sorting donations and ensuring people had food and drinks while waiting. Animal rescue was also a priority during this difficult time. Transportation and environment staff inspected infrastructure damage and coordinated reconstruction efforts. Health services played an integral role on the front lines, setting up field hospitals and helping with clean-up efforts in impacted communities.

1. Remembering the Heroes
2013 Southern Alberta Floods

2. Edmonton-based Health staff Theresa St. Jean, left, Janice Tait (currently on secondment with
Human Services), Patti Kowalski, Tanis Liebreich (now with Human Services), Laura Grantham
and Kathie Gavin were among many Alberta Health volunteers who helped with emergency
fund disbursement for southern Alberta flood victims.

3. Health policy consultant Rachel
Bryant helps sort water bottles at an
emergency fund disbursement
centre set up at Calgary’s Queen
Elizabeth High School. Rachel, who
was born and raised in Calgary, also
lent a hand at Ernest Manning High
School and Morley Recreation
Centre.

4. Donna Morrow, formerly with Health and now with JSTL as a Partnerships Consultant,
helps with water bottle distribution at Calgary’s Queen Elizabeth High School. APS
volunteers had many duties including ensuring that flood victims had access to cool
beverages and snacks while they waited from two to four hours in oftentimes
unforgiving sun and heat for their flood disbursements.

5. Animal rescue was a priority. (Photo courtesy of
Environment and Sustainable Development.)

6. Alberta Transportation Bridge Engineer Jason P. Russell; Former Deputy Minister
Rob Penny; and Executive Director, Flood Recovery Task Force, Ranjit Tharmalingam
(now ADM, Corporate Services and Information Division); inspecting reconstruction
work at the Highway 66 Elbow River bridge site in Nov. 2013 during a snow storm –
they were really dedicated!

7. Land Management Specialist Cory Wojtowicz views
debris piled up along the Crowsnest River.

8. Mike Kirby,
Invasive Plant
Specialist with
ESRD, checks a
bridge wash-out
near Porcupine
Hills.

9. Rick Nash, Leslie Wensmann and Ubaid Khan from Alberta
Transportation carry out site inspection and assessment on
Powderface Trail. A temporary steel bridge was placed over the
existing damaged bridge structure to maintain access.

10. Rick Nash with Alberta Transportation

11. Melissa Mountain, an AHS addictions counsellor, chats with Efraim and his sister Abriella in
the University of Lethbridge Student Union Building. The children were evacuated from High
River with their family and stayed in residences at the University of Lethbridge.

12. An Environmental Public Health Officer navigating through flood waters
in Calgary on her inspection route on June 25.

13. AHS volunteers make Flood Re-Entry packages at
the High River Welcome Centre.

14. Calgary AHS Internal Audit
and ERM team volunteer to
help out with the High
River clean up.

15. Alberta Health Services staff played an integral role on the front lines.

16. Tomorrow Project Research Assistants
Chelsea Leishman, Lauren Roberts and
Greg Flewelling at a flood-damaged site
in High River on July 4, 2013.

17. Staff work at a laboratory within 10-bed field hospital, which was set up in a matter of hours
on June 23 at the Medicine Hat Leisure Centre. Alberta Health Services was responding to the
possibility flooding would cut off access to Medicine Hat Regional Hospital for about 20,000
residents. This scenario didn't happen and the field hospital was closed the next day.

18. Michael Dorosh, an administrative assistant for Inter-Facility Transport, Clinical
Operations, Calgary Zone EMS, and a Calgary Highlanders solider, takes part in
the call-up of 500 military reservists.

19. A thank-you sign hangs from a
grateful resident's home.