The RCMP officer was standing in the bucket of a loader, helping flood victims into the lift, after they were driven out of Alberta’s flood areas in the back of a dump truck.
The video images played across Canada as the media covers the devastating floods in Wildrose Country.
The Mountie helping the flooded-out residents was Maple Ridge’s own Anthony Versfelt.
Having just graduated from depot in May 2011, he just finished the second year of his career’s first post in the accurately named High River, which has been the hardest hit by flooding of any Alberta town.
A Facebook photo, snapped by one of his neighbours, shows Versfelt wading through a rippling current going around his house. The water is higher than waist deep, and Versfelt is carrying a suitcase in one hand, and held high out of the water is his RCMP uniform, the traditional yellow stripes on his pants clearly visible.
The current was so strong it almost swept him away, Versfelt later told his mother, Jackie, who still lives in Maple Ridge.
Versfelt had just come off night shift on Thursday morning, June 20. His wife Brenda went to work and he went to sleep, expecting to do his shift the following night. He was woken up by a phone call a few hours later, and looked outside and saw water rushing by.
He quickly went down to their finished basement and brought upstairs as much of the young couple’s possessions as he could, hoping to keep them dry.
Then the High River RCMP detachment called him in to do emergency rescue. He quickly threw some dry clothes in a suitcase, grabbed his uniform, and made his way through the water.
He got out of the water, into uniform, then worked a triple shift, going door to door, helping evacuate people whose homes have been flooded.
“We were worried at first, because he wasn’t contacting us, but he was really busy,” Jackie said.
She has been speaking to her son almost every day during this time.
Jackie was compelled to watch the coverage of the flooding, and the work that her son was doing. She wasn’t thinking of anything else, and has probably seen every popular video of the flooding that has been published.
“I’d go to bed at night, and see water rushing past my eyes,” she said.
With the worst of the disaster over, officers who have been directly affected by the flooding, like the flooded-out Versfelts, have been given time off to deal with their own situations.
The last time Versfelt waded back to his house, he looked in the basement and saw a floating coffee table and candle set.
“But he feels lucky, because there were a lot of people worse off than them,” said Jackie.
She has spent time visiting in High River, enjoyed the rustic and artsy town, and that makes the flooding more real for her.
“It’s hard when you’ve been there, and know what it’s supposed to look like, to see it under water,” she said. “It’s a really cute, quaint town.”
