Prairie province flood response: How ready is ready enough?

If events last year in southern Alberta and more recently in southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba teach us anything, it's that forecasting and preparing for floods is an inexact science.

Dozens of communities in the two prairie provinces declared states of emergency over the last few days after heavy rainfall onto already saturated ground led to widespread inundation, cutting off some communities completely.

The intensity of the storms caught provincial and municipal authorities off guard but there's been a remarkable absence of finger-pointing so far. And neither government has requested federal assistance yet to cope with the rising waters, though Ottawa said it's available if needed.

Provincial flood forecasts are based on short-term observation coupled with historic precipitation and runoff data.

But one emergency-preparedness expert wonders if it might not be time to revise the forecasting model, given the trend in recent years of extreme weather events that overwhelm existing flood-control measures.

Saskatchewan, for instance, has had serious flooding every year since 2010 and officials suggest this year's flood will exceed that of 2011, the worst in recent years.

[ Related: Saskatchewan flooding: Melville hospital evacuated ]

“If this is the new normal, then this is going to be happening a lot more often," Richard Kinchlea, chairman of Emergency Management and Public Safety Institute at Centennial College's School of Community and Health Studies, told Yahoo Canada News.

"How many times do we have to have urban flooding to this degree before you maybe change the approach to our water management?”

A shift in weather patterns, whether it's due to climate change or some other factor, affects the reliability of flood-forecasting models. That could in term put government policy into question on everything from how much money to throw at emergency-response plans to big-ticket flood-mitigation and water-management programs.

Saskatchewan's Water Security Agency, which among other things is responsible for managing the flood threat, took extreme weather into account with its 25-year plan, issued in 2012.

"Research indicates that climate change may intensify the degree and frequency of these extremes and the flexibility to adapt to these situations will become increasingly important," says the plan's chapter on flood and drought damage reduction.

While the province now has regulations to bar future development on flood plains, it's too late in many flood-prone areas. That puts more pressure on forecasting, emergency response and flood-protection measures, the document says. Ottawa apparently is willing to reach a federal-provincial agreement for long-term flood-mitigation projects, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the question of what now constitutes normal is being discussed, agency spokesman Patrick Boyle told Yahoo Canada News.

“In Saskatchewan, typically, flooding usually comes from spring runoff and snow melt," he said.

“The precipitation and the runoff data collected over the past decade really indicates that more precipitation is falling as rainfall, and that summer flows have or are occurring in smaller water courses.”

The pattern can leave low-lying areas of the province, especially in the southeast corner bordered by Manitoba and the United States, "surcharged" with water, said Boyle. Heavy storms, like the ones that hit the province last week, can lead to serious flooding.

“Can we forecast those? No," said Boyle. "We just try to react.”

The agency's regional offices keep in close touch with local communities and give them as much warning as possible of what might be headed their way, he said, adding local residents often have a grasp of the situation already.

“A lot of these areas, they know their own rivers, they know their own streams," said Boyle. "They’ve seen levels go up and down and they can tell in certain years.”

The government also co-ordinates with neighbouring provinces and with the U.S. via an international operating agreement to share information.

Community leaders so far seem to be satisfied with the response, said David Marit, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.

Premier Brad Wall was out touring flooded areas of his province on Wednesday, along with his municipal affairs minister, who's responsible for public safety. Meanwhile, the environment minister was working the phones to ensure municipalities received the pumps and sandbagging equipment they needed, said Marit.

The widespread nature of the flooding simply came as a surprise, he said.

“I don’t think anybody realized that we were going to get that much rain," he told Yahoo Canada News. "It was never predicted that communities would see eight, 10, 11 inches of rain over 24 or 48 hours, that it would be so big.”

But Marit agreed maybe it's time for experts to revisit the forecasting model to see if it still works.

“Obviously weather patterns have changed," he said.

Kinchlea said judging from news reports, the response so far has gone as well as can be expected, given the large number of communities affected. Many of them don't have resources locally to cope, forcing them to declare states of emergency.

[ Related: Thousands of Albertans still waiting for 2013 flood disaster claims: report ]

“What happens then is the provincial organizations now have to prioritize the resources and that becomes more difficult the more communities are under states of emergency," he said.

"I suspect that things are probably going as well as they could be but there’s an immense amount of pressure to get resources out, but there’s a lot that need it. So I can imagine it’s probably pretty intense in both provinces for that co-ordination.”

Ottawa has a very limited role in such a crisis, Kinchlea said. Canada does not have the equivalent of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which can send teams into disaster areas. It will only step in if the province, overwhelmed, requests it, and its main tool is the army.

“Generally speaking the federal government does not have a response role unless it’s to activate the military if that’s required," said Kinchlea.

A province can also make agreements with neighbouring provinces to share disaster-response resources, much as they do to fight wildfires.

There will be an inevitable post-mortem once prairie flood waters recede and it will have to consider whether extreme weather needs to be factored in more than it is now, Kinchlea said.

“I think there’s a role for other levels of government, federal and provincial, to have serious look at where we have repeat disasters to say what can we do to help these communities so that it doesn’t happen again," said Marit.