Niagara region recovering from flooding

It was an overnight deluge in the western end of Niagara that flooded roads and buildings and washed out a section of the main CN rail line west of St. Catharines. Rail service along that line has been shut down indefinitely — affecting not only freight trains but also Amtrak and GO train passenger service from Toronto to Niagara Falls.

The damage is bad. Torrents of water washed out a section of the CN Rail line foundation west of Seventh Street in St. Catharines. A freight train is on the other side. It’s blocked. The line is shut down. CN has no timeline on where it will be repaired.

Freight trains are being re-routed. Amtrak train service is disrupted.

When Steve and Renee opened their basement door this morning, everything down there was floating in water.

Renee Coulter, flooded basement: “We could barely see our top stairs in the basement. It was water. Water everywhere.”

Henk Sikking heard the storm and the torrential downpour: “I had no idea how much water until 5:30 this morning when my wife woke up and said the neighbour’s are flooded.”

Henk walked into his greenhouse at Pioneer Flower Farms this morning: “In some places, we had over two feet of water in our greenhouse.”

He took these pictures of plants floating out the front door.

The thunderstorm was concentrated in an area between St.Catharines and Vineland. About 110 millimetres of rain fell overnight. That’s about five inches in a matter of hours.”

There were pumps going all over the place. Growers we talked to say they’ve never seen this much water in the orchards and fields.

Dave Wall is a tender fruit grower: “The land was a little dry. And to have the land soak up all that water and then have all the ponding and washouts. It must have really been bad.”

Roads were crumbling. This driveway was destroyed. Fourth Avenue in St. Catharines looked like a small lake. This section was closed all day.

Steve Brooker had a flooded basement: “It was one of those days where you don’t know what mother nature’s going to bring you. Yesterday was a nice sunny day. The next thing you know, you’re under water.”

There was no Amtrak service through Niagara today. Amtrak was bussing passengers between Aldershot to Buffalo and Buffalo to Toronto and they’ll continue to do that until the rail line is repaired. We just don’t know when that will be.