[tvp2003]

For those who work in the core:

Nenshi says full recovery could take months in some parts of downtown

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Ne...#ixzz2WykPJm6X

Flooding impact in downtown Calgary is so dire that some parts of the core may take weeks or months to return to normalcy, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said Saturday.

The city has announced that all of downtown will remain shut until at least the middle of the week.

Many streets in the core resemble rivers around Chinatown, Eau Claire and the east end. The LRT is shut through the core, as the tunnel below East Village is full of water. Power is out to ensure a waterlogged transformer doesn’t blow.

“As for downtown, we don’t anticipate anything even close to approaching normal until at least the middle of the week,” Nenshi told an emergency operations briefing. “There are some parts of downtown where we will measure that return to normalcy not in days but in weeks and months.”

The skyscraper-dominated core is home to Canada’s oilpatch — a key engine of the national economy. Between 150,000 and 180,000 Calgarians work downtown, making it home to more than one-quarter of the city’s jobs.

It’s also home to thousands of residents in buildings that range from seniors’ complexes to rental towers and high-end condominiums.

Calgary’s economy is worth about $120 million a day, much of that through the energy sector, chamber of commerce CEO Adam Legge said. It was shut down Friday, and he expects a full week’s worth of large losses.

“It won’t derail the economy but it will be noticeable,” he said. Many companies will be distracted from their revenue targets or business plans “for at least this quarter,” said Legge, an economist by trade.