Homeowners still uneasy one year after surviving ‘Flood of the century’
Chris and Patricia DaSilva can’t help but nervously glance out the living-room window of their Tecumseh home as a heavy rain begins to batter down.
Their basement flooded in 2016 — the year they got married — and then again on Aug. 29, 2017, “My stomach starts churning every time it rains,” Patricia said. “Every time it rains hard and we’re at work or not home, we call each other or my dad to come check the basement.”
The Aug. 29 deluge, described as “the flood of the century,” hit 7,000 area homes and was the largest catastrophic weather event in Canada that year. It came 11 months after another rain storm that damaged 4,000 properties in 2016. There’s a common thread to the stories of flooded homeowners like the DaSilvas: an anxiety about rainstorms that never existed before. When their Northfield Way home began to flood for the second time in 11 months, the DaSilvas were traumatized.
“I can’t explain the emotional turmoil,” Patricia said. “I felt like I had PTSD. I felt like I was reliving the first flood. We’d just completed the repair work from 2016 just three weeks prior.” Fortunately, the thousands they spent on refinishing their basement and putting in a second sump pump and backflow valve wasn’t wasted. The problem proved to be the failure of the original sump pump, which Chris was able to get restarted in time to limit the damage to some baseboards. He estimates the 2016 flood cost them $20,000.
“It’s made for a very stressful first year of marriage,” he said. “We’ve been forced to make some decisions before we wanted. We, along with a lot of help from our family, had to do most of the work ourselves after paying for our wedding (in September 2016).”
Carol Menter said the rumble of thunder and thud of raindrops on the roof sends her scurrying down to the basement of her Riverside home to ensure the sump pump is purring.
“I have a lot of weather apps on my phone,” said Menter, whose home flooded last August and also in March 2017 when a sump pump failed while she wasn’t home. “When it rains I go down and roll up the area rugs and get them off the floor. I’ve put lawn furniture down there and plastic-top folding tables. Everything has metal legs. I’m 71, and I’m not going through this again.”
Menter’s basement decor isn’t going to earn her a slot in HGTV’s lineup, but it has allowed her to sleep easier at night. However, it has cost her nearly $100,000 to buy some peace of mind. The Eastlawn Boulevard resident has replaced the sewer piping under the basement floor, installed a backflow valve and new sump pump, redone a bathroom, installed new flooring and drywall, replaced appliances and other household items, and paid for the cleanup crews that took weeks to restore her basement. Menter had already had her foundation waterproofed 13 years ago, but that wasn’t enough of a defence against the monsoon that dumped more than 220 millimetres of rain on the area Aug. 29, 2017.
“My sump just couldn’t keep up,” Menter recalled.
The final blow came when, before she could settle her second claim, Mentor’s insurance company cancelled her home insurance. After calling around, she was able to get 60 per cent coverage for her home, but no protection against flooding. Mentor has been assured with the flood mitigation investments she’s made, she’ll be able to get full home coverage, including some against flooding, in the fall.
“I’m lucky I had the money to spend $20,000 on putting in new sewer pipes,” Mentor said. “I feel for others who don’t have the money.”
The mental anguish flooding leaves is enough to test the resolve of even longtime residents. Laura Toffan and her husband, Will, have lived in their Jefferson Avenue home north of Wyandotte for 31 years.
Because their house sits higher, the Toffans only got a little water in their basement last August, but lost their Dodge Caravan. The mass destruction in the historic block made Laura question the wisdom of staying there.
“At one point, I wanted to move because I can’t take this anymore,” she said. “I’ve settled down, but I’ve seen a lot of people leave in the blocks around us.” Storms that never bothered her before now trigger anxiety. She frequently checks the basement and moves what she can off the floor. The couple also parks their new Jeep as far up their inclined driveway as they can when a storm is approaching. The Toffans had to abandon their van when they unexpectedly ran into deep water near Reedmere Road and Wyandotte Street and the van began to float before taking on water. The couple waded the rest of the way home, wondering what devastation awaited them.
“It was eye-opening to see how people react in a crisis,” Laura said. “There were people helping, but there were also people yelling at you to keep our cars off their property. The layer of civilized behaviour is very thin.”
The 2017 flood spurred her to dig into Riverside’s history. She has found pictures in the Windsor Library showing a flood in the early 1900s, which looked strikingly similar to last August. “We haven’t learned,” she said. “This area was basically a bog. We’re overbuilding. There’s no place for water to run off with all the pavement.” Westchester Drive resident Will Robinet certainly has learned how vulnerable homeowners have become to intense downpours. After suffering $50,000 in dam- age from the 2016 flood, Robinet dug up around his foundation, had it waterproofed and took advantage of the City of Windsor’s subsidized programs for installing sump pumps and backflow valves. “The city ’s sump pump and backflow valve programs are fabulous,” Robinet said. “We didn’t get any water in 2017 after the stuff we did. Pretty much everyone in the neighbourhood had them put in, and I didn’t hear of anyone getting flooded.”
Stephen Fields wasn’t much concerned as the rain came down last Aug. 29. He and his wife, Karen, have lived in their McKay Avenue home near Holy Names High School for 17 years without flooding issues.
“We didn’t even have a sump pump because there was no place ever built for it and it was never a problem,” he said.
That changed in a phone call when his teenage son reached him at work to report the tide was beginning to rise in the basement. “It takes me about eight to 10 minutes to get home, and by the time I got there I had a geyser coming out of the drain,” Stephen said. “We got about one and a half feet.” It would’ve been worse, seeping up to the home’s next level, if not for some ingenuity. Karen stopped on her way home to pick up a sump pump.
Stephen was able to hook the pump to some PVC piping he had and ejected the water out a basement window.
However, the flood destroyed his deck, furnace, a fridge, freezer, hot water tank, and the washer and dryer.
The entire McKay Avenue neighbourhood was submerged, first with water and later by destroyed belongings piled up by the curbs. “It has had a traumatic effect on people,” said Stephen, who had his foundation water proofed, installed a sump pump and is exploring adding a backflow valve through the city’s subsidized program. “Our damage was about $15,000. We don’t need the space, so we have no interest in refinishing it.”
Though Denise St. Louis was fortunate to avoid flooding in 2017, the Tecumseh resident is still recovering from the 2016 deluge that left her home an island.
The backyard of her Lacasse Boulevard home bears the scars of the drainage pipe that she’s had laid to help redirect water away from her home. The next step is to bring in topsoil to fill in trenches and grade the property, which lies lower than her surrounding neighbours.
“It’s 2018, and this event was in 2016, and I’m still dealing with it,” said St. Louis, who got two feet of water in her partially-finished basement.
“It’s been very stressful. It’s been hard to get contractors. Anytime it rains, I don’t sleep, and I’m not alone in that.”
St. Louis has no plans to refinish her basement beyond putting waterproof paint on the walls to seal the cinder blocks and some dry rock on the wall.
“It’s just for storage now,” said St. Louis, who had $5,000 limit on her flood insurance.
She lost her furnace, water heater, air conditioner, some furniture and personal belongings in the flood.
St. Louis went to the effort of applying to the Ontario Disaster Recovery Fund, but her claim of $3,307.50 was rejected.
“It was very disheartening to take the time to do the application and get nothing,” she said. “I just eventually gave up the fight. I had to deal with other issues.”
In the past couple of years, St. Louis has spent in excess of $6,000 on flood mitigation.
She fears that might not be enough with development scheduled for the nearby site of the former Victoria elementary school. “I’m afraid it’ll put more strain on the system and there will be another bad flood,” St. Louis said. “I think the lesson is we have to pay more attention to the strain we’re putting on our sewer systems with development.”