Hannah Walowski watched in disbelief as water seeped into the basement of her childhood home in Fort McMurray, Alta., on Monday. “That’s when panic kind of started ensuing in all of us,” she told Global News on Tuesday.
Her family started packing up and salvaging what they could as the threat of water escalated. Flooding was caused by ice jams and spring runoff from the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers, according to the Alberta government. “The floor in my room was cracking and building up because the water was coming under the flooring and pushing it up,” Walowski said. “That was kind of sad to see my room that I grew up in get destroyed… After that, water just kept rushing in.