St. Catharines declares state of emergency after flooding

The City of St. Catharines is dealing with the second flood in a week and Mayor Mat Siscoe has declared a state of emergency and support backed by the Province of Ontario.

The mayor called the state of emergency Monday morning and received a call from Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who offered support through the Ontario Corps — an organization that offers resources in times like this.

Welcome news to the affected residents in the area, who are cautiously optimistic.

“It became a holding area after the first flood — for a lot of the garbage you can see all the flooring that’s been torn out of the basement is in here,” said Siscoe, describing what happened to his house.

After the second dumping of rain Sunday, the mayor described the second flood as much worse and called a state of emergency.

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“The state of the emergency is us saying ‘we have now exhausted all of our opportunities, all of the things we can do and we need additional help,’ because there is still significant work that needs to be done’,” said Siscoe.

Siscoe is experiencing this first hand, showing how the damage is in his own home, while fielding messages from the community.

Monday morning he spoke to Ford, who offered support in the way of resources, but no confirmed support in the way of dollars.

Emergency resource group Ontario Corps will deploy resources to the City of St. Catharines “as soon as possible.”

“The premier expressed sympathy for what is going on here and identified the resources,” said Siscoe. “He’s speaking to Minister (Jill) Dunlop, who’s in charge of emergency preparedness, about seeing what resources can be deployed here.”

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“No infrastructure is designed to handle that amount of rain,” said retired Environment Canada climatologist David Phillips.

Phillips says the amount of rain we’ve received in the last two weeks is approaching half a year’s worth.

He deemed the situation in Niagara as a “multi-million dollar disaster” for the region, with the amount of damage to infrastructure and property loss.

The reason for this intense level of rain, he says, is due to climate change.

“What we are seeing now are these thunderstorms, that are standing right over top of you, and they’re just drenching you with all of this rain in a short period of time, and again, the drainage systems can’t take that amount of rain,” said Phillips.

“There’s not a city in Canada that could have managed the water that was collected in both of the events,” said Erin Cotton, a local resident and flood victim.

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Residents on Duncan Drive are still cleaning up the debris from the first flood, while dealing with the amount of rainfall in the last 24 hours.

Cotton says her $50,000 from insurance may just cover expenses and believes there’s a lesson to be learned here.

“These events have highlighted some serious flaws in our current infrastructure,” said Cotton.

“As far as we know, it’s going to cover $25,000 and not even come close to replacing anything,” said Jessica Gunn, a local resident and flood victim.

Just down the street, Gunn and her family are concerned with rising costs and how they will recover.

“We just got our fridge the other day and unfortunately the water was rising so fast,” said Gunn. “We tried to do our best to try to save that.”

“I’ve been flooded out and I’ve been hearing about it, reading about it,” said Mayor of Niagara Falls Jim Diodati in a social media post. “St. Catharines, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and now I get a taste of it.”

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Diodati says the downpour in his area was like a “winter blizzard from all sides.”

He said city staff measured 127 millimetres of rain on Sunday, but reports it is now retreating.

Diodati said he was thankful for the help from Siscoe and the community.

“I love Mayor Siscoe and he offered a pump, but luckily my neighbour across the street gave me one of his pumps,” said Diodati.

The support to the City of St. Catharines from the province has no timeline, but is expected in the coming days.

More information on what residents can do if their basements flooded can be found on the City of St. Catharines’ website.

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