Fort McMurray neighbourhood trying to convince municipality to buy them out

You wanted to live along the river . . .

Exactly. Don't do your research or choose to ignore mother natures proclivities and you pay the price. It's like the low bank waterfront homeowners who complain about erosion and demand that the Fed's or Province pay to remediate their properties from storm damage.

Exactly. Don't do your research or choose to ignore mother natures proclivities and you pay the price. It's like the low bank waterfront homeowners who complain about erosion and demand that the Fed's or Province pay to remediate their properties from storm damage.

Anyone who has lived in Fort Mac over a spring knows that all 3 rivers converge there, and often will ice dam and back up into the city.

Most of the city is on hilltops, but the downtown area sits at the convergence of these three rivers. Floods happen annually, its only a matter of degree.

If you want to build your home on a flood plain, don't ask me to cover your costs.

Exactly. Don't do your research or choose to ignore mother natures proclivities and you pay the price. It's like the low bank waterfront homeowners who complain about erosion and demand that the Fed's or Province pay to remediate their properties from storm damage.

Anyone who has lived in Fort Mac over a spring knows that all 3 rivers converge there, and often will ice dam and back up into the city.

Most of the city is on hilltops, but the downtown area sits at the convergence of these three rivers. Floods happen annually, its only a matter of degree.

If you want to build your home on a flood plain, don't ask me to cover your costs.

I was thinking of buying a house in Grand Forks BC. I found one that was beautiful, under priced and fully renovated with a fantastic view. Then I saw the view from the front window. You were literally across the road from one of the 2 rivers that converge on the city.

That fact, the cheap price for the home and the recent "total renovation" were giant alarm bells so we immediately passed on it and decided to stay in the earthquake zone since there was less chance of that happening than of Grand Forks flooding and taking out that house.

Last time I was in Castlegar, you could buy a house and put it on a credit card.

But the place to get a summer home right now is Japan. Some southern islands are down 80% in population as the young ones move to the cities. Some small towns are completely abandoned, and you can get property for just the back taxes.

Residents divided on Fort McMurray flood mitigation plan

It's not like floods are surprising. That pic of the way the Clearwater river snakes through downtown makes it pretty obvious that flooding is a regular occurrence.

The ugliness of that place. I used to drop a 100 megaton Tsar Bomba on Fort Mac just for laughs when I was fucking around with the goofy old NukeMap app. And the person I got along best with on the one job up there was the amazingly and refreshingly cynical site admin assistant who always wore a T-shirt that had "the best view of Fort McMurray is the one in my rear-view mirror" on it. Hateful, hateful place. My being deluded enough to go up their for the "big bucks jobs! jobs! jobs!" scam was one of the many factors over the last decade that completely destroyed my entire life.

Sadly, boom towns often leave devastation in their wake, either in people, the environment, or the town itself.

I almost went up there a couple times, especially after a friend who was a welder partially retired at 35 because he took everything he earned during the late 90s/erly 2000s and plowed it into rental properties.

Here's hoping life turns around for ya!

It won't because God has put me in the position that He always wanted me to be in. There is no Satan afflicting any of us, there is only God doing these things for reasons of His own. Thanks anyway though.

Jeez, I take a little time away from here and you... well, actually, I think you're pretty well the same as last time I checked in.

Good to know some things don't change even when the world is going crazy.

Here's to hanging in there

Unsound sightings are nearly as elusive as the wild Khar sightings.

This is the way God made me.

Is Fort Mac one of those places that not only you wouldn't want to live there but you wouldn't want to visit either?

Basically, yeah. People are just people, no different there than anywhere else. But it's a place no one really wants to be in or go to. It's aesthetically ugly and the behaviour that occurs there is very unpleasant to anyone who was raised with manners or politeness, just too rough and too rude. I found it a very cold place, and I'm not talking about the winter temperature there either.