Toronto flooding

Heavy rain hammered Southern Ontario last night but nowhere more sever than in Toronto.

Flash floding drenched parking garages, soaked streets, and forced the rescue of dozens of people, including a pair of co-workers trapped in an elevator with water that was over their heads.

Video shows a firefighter trying frantically to get to a person trapped in a sinking car.

Similar videos flooded social media.

Parts of Toronto were hammered by as much as 72 millimetres of rain last night in a two hour span.

Much of the city was under water.

The storm was a lot more harrowing for two others who were trapped in an elevator that was quickly filling up with water.

Klever Freire and his co-worker were pulled to safety just in time last night. The water was up to their necks when firefighters arrived. He says all he could think about was his daughter.

The two weren’t able to call for help initially because they were in an elevator, in a basement They had no cell signal, and the elevator phone wasn’t working.

When police officers arrived, the water in the elevator was more than 6 feet deep and the men only had about a foot of air space.

Cst. Ryan Barnett from the Toronto Police Services says, “We could hear them inside screaming for help, saying the water was too high and they needed help.”

Officers Barnett and McSweeney say they had to tread water but they managed to pry open the elevator doors with a crowbar.

The Toronto Fire Department responded to more than 600 calls for people needing help including the rescue of a 5 year old boy from a flooding basement apartment.