Staff are picking up the pieces at the River Creek RV Park, located on Hwy. 21 west of Stettler, after an ice jam wreaked havoc at the site earlier this week.
“I got a phone call on Monday morning - at about 6 a.m.,” explained Andre Mercier, who manages the park for his son.
“I came out here to have a look because they said the ice had already built up to the trailers. At 7 a.m. when I got here, everything had gone through the camp already,” he said, adding the enormous slabs of ice were all over the place.
“It has smashed up a lot of trailers and banged up decks, power sheds, and water sewer systems, too. So there is a lot of work to be done here,” he said. “It’s devastating when you walk through here - it’s like walking through a place where a tornado had gone through and you see the pieces left behind.”
Mercier said the force of the ice picked up some trailers and moved some of them as far as 100 yards.
“Some of them are tipped over at the side of the river,” he said, adding three remain missing at this point.
“Some of the blocks of ice must be 2,000 to 3,000 lbs. So there was a lot of force that went through here.”
Trailers had between two to three ft. of water in them as well.
“The damage in this park right now is just devastating,” said Mercier, who has been managing the park for seven years now.
“We are working our way around here, letting the ice melt. I’m trying to assist people and what-not, doing what I can for them. Mother Nature hit us pretty hard over here, and we are just going to have to try and pick up the pieces the best way we know how.”
An opening date remains unknown at this point.
