The owners of three damaged homes along Cougar Creek still face uncertainty as provincial officials come close to finishing assessments of all affected residences in the area.
Of 43 homes considered to be in the red zone immediately after the creek’s flood waters subsided at the end of June, 20 remain unoccupied as of this week. Town officials said provincial assessors have determined all but three can be repaired.
Those three homes are the worst hit, and it is still unclear whether they will have to be demolished and rebuilt or repaired through a disaster recovery program.
Dan Vukadinovic, along with his wife Colleen and daughter Tatiana, lived in one of those three homes. In fact, the three-storey Grotto Road residence is arguably the hardest hit of all from the Cougar Creek flood.
“I thought maybe last year was the big one,” Vukadinovic said referring to the 2012 flooding of the creek. “It is an alluvial fan, I was aware of that, but it is supposedly a controlled creek and building permits were issued, so I trusted in the higher authorities that it was safe to live here.
“I don’t believe that anymore, of course, that’s for sure.”
The Canmore resident and geologist was working up north on June 20 when rain levels in the valley reached historic highs, causing mountain streams like Cougar Creek to surge with debris.
He said when he finally returned, he saw his home destroyed from beneath by debris that hit the foundation and acted like ballistics busting through the house. The finished basement and half the ground floor is completely gone and the house is too unstable to be entered.
“It wasn’t so much the house, or seeing the devastation of the house, it was the idea of losing a home. That your home could get so violated, that was what I had a hard time working with and what I dealt with at the well site (where he was working),” Vukadinovic said. “I was lucky in a sense, I was working away from it and I will be honest, I couldn’t look at pictures and I just said ‘I can’t look at them right now’, but before I came back I did so I knew what to expect, so when I saw it I was ready.”
The family purchased the 3,000 square foot home in 1997 and made various improvements to the yard, deck, kitchen and basement. He said on June 19, it was likely worth $800,000 and was a significant part of their retirement plan. Now, Vukadinovic said he doesn’t want to live there anymore and with the details of the disaster recovery program’s limitations for those affected coming to light, he is even more frustrated.
“Let’s just pick a house that can get repaired, they are going to be able to keep their house, their hardwood, their granite, everything,” he said. “This house is beyond repair from what I understand, although I haven’t’ received a concrete answer, but I don’t think it can be repaired.
“So if the house gets knocked down, all I get back is an average Alberta house price, whatever that is. So because Mother Nature kicked me a little harder than the guy upstream, I get kicked even harder by the government again in the recovery; this is where the unfairness really bothers me.”
He said if he had the option to insure his home from a flood he would have protected it, but he doesn’t have that option. Instead, he has the provincial disaster recovery program (DRP) to deal with and officials have made it clear it is not meant to be an insurance program and will only replace homes to a basic level of finish, which doesn’t include hardwood or granite.
“This is where I have a problem with the DRP, we had just finished upgrading our home so it was an average Canmore home and in Canmore an average home has hardwood, has granite and has stainless steel,” Vukadinovic said.
On Sunday (July 28), the province announced funding parameters for flood affected homes. The program will pay a basic per square foot cost of $121 for a two-storey home, and $35 for a developed basement. Canmore has been assigned a multiplier of 15 per cent to reflect local prices.
However, the future is still uncertain for the family and they are far from being in a place where they feel at home again. Vukadinovic said it is too soon to say what will happen, but he is seeking advice and they are living in a two-bedroom investment condo they purchased a few years back for now. Neighbours nearby are storing property salvaged from the home by firefighters.
“The Canmore fire and rescue guys were amazing, I think they picked up on my desperation, they took a risk and they went in and brought out as much as they could from the house,” he said. “At this point, the stress level has been incredible… It would almost be easier if they said I would get nothing so get used to it.
“It is the unknown part that gnaws away at you.”
