state of emergency

State of emergency

In early 2013, a state of emergency was announced in the northern municipality I was living in at the time. Heavy rains had caused severe flooding. The Veuve River, which flowed below Main Street, came close to flowing over the bridge rather than under it. This was absolutely amazing in a horrifying way - I don't know how high the water levels rose but they were something to see.

During the night the temperatures dropped well below freezing, causing a thin layer of ice to form on top of the water in areas where it wasn't moving quickly. In the morning, as we ventured out to survey the damage, it looked like hundreds of plastic grocery bags had blown into town and attached themselves to all the vegetation in the area. As we got closer, we realized that each bush and tree had grown an ice skirt overnight. The ice, left behind as the water receded, shows just how much water came and went in a short period of time.