Now that I am finally caught up with this thread I thought I would share my story of the events as someone who was visiting the city.
I was downtown at the Hyatt all day on Thursday with a very busy meeting schedule. We all knew that Canmore was in trouble but even Thursday afternoon we were still planning to head to the Kananaskis river after work on Friday to kayak with the Oldman river planned for Saturday and the Red Deer river on Sunday. After the meeting we had a client party that ran until 11 with about 400 people and almost no knowledge of what was happening. (It was formal so no one was spending much time on their phones). We didn't realize the extent of the threat until we left the party looking for a bar and were told that everything was closing early so that employees could get home before all of the roads closed.
On Friday morning we lost power at the hotel at 8 AM and were told to evacuate the building around 10:30. At that point downtown was a ghost town except for a long line of cars on center street trying to cross the river. Center street was gridlocked but we took a dry 5th avenue and left downtown on Memorial with no incident and zero traffic. Deerfoot was also fine heading north and out of the city. (We thought of staying but didn't want to add to the burden on the city.)
Anyway, I was just amazed that at a time when so much was happening we could be collectively busy enough that word never spread. We thought the bartenders were joking when they said they were getting out of the core while there was still time.
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