Whew!, we've had some rain. In the 69 years I've lived here I've never seen flooding like we just experienced.
We've had 3 storms with-in 2 weeks, the first each bringing 100mm of the wet stuff, then Sunday night another that brought 170 mm of rain in under 12 hours.
The Municipality seemed a little lax with ditching the past few years and that probably added to the issue. Most Municipalities contract a lot of work out these days, preferring the cost of the Contractor to the cost of having Employees......but our Taxes never go down. More Taxes, less Service.
To add to Sunday nights deluge, just as things were getting dicey for most home-owners ( flooding basements) - Hydro One had a 4 hour black-out over Vineland, Beamsville, Smithville and some surrounding areas - the ones being swamped the worst at that time.
Our boys and ourselves all have generators so out they came and we kept pumping all night. A LOT of my neighbors weren't so fortunate.
The North end of St Catharines all the way to Virgil has been hammered twice now as well. I have friends who are still trying to clean up after the first flooding - 3-4' of SEWAGE in their finished basements.....only to get flooded a second time in two weeks.
A number of Insurance Companies are refusing coverage. Some home-owners have no sump pumps, others have no check valves on sewer lines while still others like ourselves are being refused because they say we live on a flood plain. Technically, they are correct, the area we occupy is between the base of the Niagara Escarpment and the south shore of Lake Ontario. That area is an ancient lake bed - so they call it a flood plain and after what we saw driving around it is indeed a flood plain.
We survived with a little storm water in our basements, by yesterday afternoon between pumping and fans we're all dried out. Some neighbors didn't fair so well.
Our youngest son and his wife own/operate Good Manners Ice Cream on our frontage ( that was itself a Lake for a day and a half) so yesterday ( holiday Monday) to try and cheers folks up a little they posted on their website to " come and get a single scoop cone - FOR FREE - and leave a donation if you feel up to it. They went through over 20 gallons of ice cream, donating the ice cream and employee wages.
It looks like they gathered around $1200.00 to go toward helping folks in the area with their struggles.
I'm damn proud of them and the people who donated.
July in Ottawa was the largest rain fall ever. Dating back to the 1890's. This has nothing to do with sewers, ditches or anything else. Design work is based on some form of information. This is historical. As for insurance not paying, people should read their policies. Most of the time it's clearly stated, sewer back ups are not covered
