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2013 Calgary Flood – Water Damage Assessments

For the past few days my great city has been in a state of emergency. Due to a combination of melt water and intense rainstorms the watershed of Southern Alberta has been flooding with astonishing and record shattering levels. Some towns have been virtually wiped off the face of the map, others cut off from access due to the Transcanada highway being washed away.

In Calgary, the Bow and Elbow river breached their banks with 10 times their normal flow volume, displacing 100,000 residents and requiring the evacuation of our downtown core, large areas of which is still without power.

The Stem is located in one of the hardest hit communities, Bowness, right on the Bow River. On thursday evening about 7:30 i put aside my dinner, tossed the kids into the car and raced down to evacuate my wife from the family shop, just making into the evacuation zone before they cut off access. For the next 48 hours we sat glued to twitter and streaming news as we watched our city suffer under a 100 year flood.

However, our office was one of the lucky ones, the flood waters crept to within 30 meters of our front door. But many of our fellow businesses and many more residents lost immeasurable amounts, majority of which is uninsurable.

For the past two days I’ve put aside repairing of phones and website development to assist the less fortunate in my area. Never swung and axe as much, never hauled mud soaked belongings period. I’ve been stunned by the generosity of my fellow Calgarians, the sense of community and our leadership.

The economic impact is going the hurt everyone, myself included: people will have more important things to spend money on then a broken iPhone or iPad.

The Stem would like to help out affected Calgarians by offering free water damage assessments on Apple computers, iPhone or iPads. Insurance will not cover anything damaged by overland flood, but at least I can take a peek to see if your computer or device has a second chance.

It should be noted that The Stem Creatives’ data centre of choice DataHive managed to have no downtime. This facility is located in the heart of downtown, and while surrounded by flood waters and nearly having to go onto generators, managed to keep up and running.

We have lots of clean up to do, infrastructure repair and the Calgary Stampede to get going. We are Calgarians and we are up to the challenge… Come Hell or High Water.

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Ryszard (Rick) Gold, From Calgary, Alberta, Canada has over 20 years of experience working with Apple products in a technical capacity. Passionate about technology in general, his natural troubleshooting abilities, curiosity and appreciation of good design lead him into working exclusively with Apple Computer products.
Ryszard Gold
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