Calgary won’t be fully recovered from September snowstorm until late 2017: report

The September snowstorm may be long gone, but its effects will be felt for quite some time.

City Council received an updated report from administration on the disaster Monday, which says the total cost of the damage will be $18 million dollars for the response phase which goes until the end of the year.

The next two phases are recovery and restoration which don’t have cost estimates and are expected to completed by December 2017.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said both the cost and time frame are a bit surprising.

“It’s higher than I would’ve thought, we’ve been working on a figure between $8-$10 million for some time, but as we’ve done more of the work and gotten a better sense of what is out there that number has gone up,” he said.

The immediate tasks include public safety, including tree hazard and mitigation and debris removal, including removing all of the hanging branches overhead before winter comes.

“Number two then is to do the cleanup of the stuff that’s not dangerous and number three is to look at what we need to do for pruning and replanting in the long-term and that’s a long, long project,” he said.

The report says all 227 communities in the city were impacted, with approximately 74,000 homes losing power, along with 80 traffic lights.

An estimated 50 per cent of all trees were damaged, including 500,000 city trees and 1.5 million private ones.

An updated report on costs and estimates is set to be presented to council on November 17.

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