Chestermere assessing storm damage
Chestermere officials are scrambling to protect the city against future downpours after heavy rainfall flooded homes, parks and streets a second time in three days.
The city had already been reeling from Sunday’s deluge, which brought surging waters into the basements of more than 300 homes, leaving many homeowners worried their insurance will not cover all the damage.
A smaller storm Tuesday blanketed the city with even more hail and rain, overwhelming natural and man- made drainage systems that had been saturated by the earlier rainfall.
City officials said they received fewer than 10 reports of homes flooding a second time, but acknowledged they don’t have a complete grasp of the latest storm’s impact.
With rain in the forecast, many residents feared flooding would become a recurring nightmare.
“We at the city are doing everything we can to make sure that we are addressing the next event, regardless of when that happens,” Mayor Patricia Matthews said. “We have got some street sweepers out to make sure the roads are clear and there’s no debris affecting any storm systems.”
Daiana Casaldarnos, a Chestermere resident not affected by flooding, spent Wednesday helping families whose lives had been in upheaval after surging waters ruined their basements and belongings. She had organized meal and laundry deliveries while helping them replace lost items, from towels and linens to boys clothing.
“Most of the people that I’ve been dealing with have been hit twice,” Casaldarnos said. “They just got it cleaned up and now they’ve been hit again. … They don’t have access to laundry, they don’t have access to showers.”
Sunday’s downpour drenched the city with a high volume of rain in a short period of time, with 114 millimetres falling in just one hour during the storm.
The deluge filled three storm water storage ponds designed to capture rain and slowly release it to mitigate flooding. They were still at capacity when Tuesday’s storm soaked Chestermere, overflowing the ponds and causing more localized flooding, according to the local water utility.
Making matters worse, hail clogged storm drains while an already saturated ground was incapable of handling additional moisture, Chestermere Utilities Inc. reported.
“We’ve got crews on and pumps going trying to get the ( storage pond) levels down,” said Ray MacIntosh, the utility’s president and chief operating officer. “We’re going as fast as we can so that, hopefully, this doesn’t happen again.”
The utility had tried to drain one of its storage ponds with a single pump after Sunday’s rainfall, but it did not work fast enough. Officials have brought in additional pumps in the hopes of avoiding future flooding and will later determine if they need more, MacIntosh said.
One pond had been drained by 406 millimetres by Wednesday afternoon, according to the utility.
“That was a shower that the system would have been able to handle and has handled in the past,” he said. “It’s just that when you already have ponds that are at their limit and can’t take any more, you add a little bit more and it does spill over.”
According to the city, most of the flooding Tuesday occurred in ponds, parks and on streets.
Matthews said city crews have been working tirelessly to respond to residents’ concerns in the aftermath of both storms. Staff were also in negotiations with provincial officials in the hopes of securing disaster relief funds for affected homeowners.
Matthews has boasted about neighbours helping neighbours and strangers from other communities offering their assistance as Chestermere cleaned up from Sunday’s wallop, which hit hundreds of families.
Tuesday, she felt her heart drop when yet another storm system moved over the city.
“It was so unreal to know that there are so many people watching that rain come down … and all having the same thought, which is, ‘ I hope it’s not my basement again,’ ” she said. “It was just heartbreaking to watch it happen.”