A Foothills area business continued to provide assistance to the flood recovery plan in High River even after losing a pair of $500,000 trucks in the process.
“Two big manure trucks are under water down by Sunshine Lake somewhere but we are okay,” said Ken Smith of Ken Smith Corral Cleaners while helping to build a berm in northeast High River Sunday. “I don’t know if we are covered but I am hoping we will be by Alberta Relief, so I am not sweating just yet.
“But you know, we have to help – they are people that had to get out.”
Smith Corral Cleaners provided a pair of manure hauling trucks that were hauling something else last week – they were transporting hundreds of stranded flood victims out of High River.
The Smiths starting assisting on Thursday, June 20 when Ken’s sons Jarrett and Keenan were asked to help evacuees in the west end of High River get down 12th Avenue where they would be transported to either Highwood High School or the fire hall.
They sent out two front-end loaders and two manure spreader trucks.
The problem was, there was about seven-feet of water on 12th Avenue. The large trucks were high enough to get through the water — passing several stranded and floating cars along the way.
“Jarrett was guessing they transported 500 people in one truck and the other probably did the same,” Smith said.
Ken said they shut it down by about 2:30 a.m. Friday morning and were back at it again four hours later, trying to help out as the floodwaters had looped around to east High River.
That’s when Smith lost his trucks.
“We tried to baby the trucks in down near Joe Clark School and one of the trucks hit a surge of water and shut it down,” Smith said.
The other driver tried to assist and became stranded as well.
Despite having a pair of trucks breaking down and stranded on Friday, Smith had more equipment out helping with the cleanup in High River the following day.
He will worry about the trucks later.
“If we don’t have them we will just get by with what we have got,” Smith said.
It’s hard for hard-working men to stand around and do nothing in the middle of an emergency.
When Jonas Payce and employees at Farmway Machinery were standing in front of their business on 12th Avenue Thursday watching evacuees trying to get across a raging flood, they knew they had to do something.
“It is what it is,” Payce said. “You have to do something to help. You can either stand around and watch or do something.”
Payce estimates he made five trips across the floodwater in a Farmway Machinery combine on 12th Avenue carrying about 30 people each time to dry land near the High River Fire Hall.
“There was one point when I had a kid in a cradle sitting on my lap, a guy with polio sitting beside me and another kid on the floor of the cab,” he said.
The efforts were taking place despite Farmway Machinery having equipment in its lot under water.
Payce said the combine didn’t incur any damage. He said although they didn’t have permission to take the combine from Farmway Machinery owner Hugh Joyce, they did receive the owner’s blessing afterwards.
“I saw Hugh on the side of the road and he wasn’t mad or anything,” Payce said. “He said ‘what are you going to do?’ We did the right thing.”
What they did was help more than 100 people get to dry land.
Smith stressed there were several foothills businesses assisting with the evacuation and without everyone’s sacrifices and support many people would have been stranded.
