That’s a real tragedy, but I guess the price of being so close to the Rockies.
It’s highly unusual in that area. It’s not so much the proximity to the mountains as it is the shallow river beds. The Bow River, for example, flows out of the mountains and across the foothills as a swift-running river. Further downstream some of these rivers have carved out valleys with deep embankments, but it’s rare for the river to flow more than a few feet deep even during the heaviest rainfall and snowmelt seasons.