'Had to swim to get my horses': Alta. woman recounts how family left home on a boat after flood

Chantal Bustard's property in Yellowhead County west of Edmonton flooded within an hour on Monday.

Chantal Bustard's property in Yellowhead County west of Edmonton flooded within an hour on Monday.

"It was absolutely crazy how quickly it happened," she recalled to CTV News Edmonton the next day in an interview. "My driveway was puddles when I got home and then literally – [it] felt 20 minutes later – we were swimming."

She, her fiance, and their kids live immediately east of Peers, Alta., on the other side of Highway 32.

A creek that branches from the McLeod River north of Peers runs through the family's horse pasture, about 300 feet away from their house.

Normally, Bustard can jump across the creek. But after two days of heavy rain, "the McLeod River is what it looked like. Very wide and the current was very strong," she said.

The nearest government weather station at Carrot Creek, east of Peers on Highway 16, counted 85 millimetres of rain on Sunday and 51 millimetres on Monday. That's more precipitation than was measured throughout the entire month of June in each of the previous five years, save 2019 when the station counted 167 millimetres.

Early afternoon Monday, Bustard got a call at work that her stud horse had gotten out. At home, she discovered the creek had flooded the pasture enough that the animal had been able to swim to a different area. She put him in a pen on a dry field and went back to work.