Flood victims voice their frustrations
Some victims of last year’s floods say they are still in bureaucratic hell, waiting for public agencies to provide promised compensation.
Several of those residents took to the microphone at a public meeting in Pierrefonds—Roxboro Tuesday night to voice frustration with what they say has been terrible communication and poor co-ordination between public agencies.
About 150 people attended the meeting of the city’s public security committee, held in ground zero of last year’s flooding, the Pierrefonds Cultural Centre. Quebec Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux said this month that roughly 80 per cent of the people affected by last spring ’s floods have received some compensation, worth $135 million.
However that was little solace to some who came out to the public meeting.
“We are real people and we’re suffering, going through mental torture and nightmares,” said Taussef Bhatti, an Île-Bizard resident who has been living in a hotel with his wife and children since last May. Bhatti is still waiting for a permit to rebuild his house and has received no cash advances from the province to do so. “What is a reasonable time period that we should be allowed to suffer?”
Alex Norris, the chairperson of the public security committee, said while he can’t address specific questions, he pointed out that it is difficult for different public bodies to co-ordinate when someone’s house has been flooded and must be rebuilt.
While communication seems to be a problem for flood victims trying to get back on their feet, communication was also problematic during the response to the disaster, the city’s public security commission heard at the meeting Tuesday.
Roughly 1,100 citizens were affected when 430 homes were flooded last year in Pierrefonds— Roxboro, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Ahuntsic—Cartierville and Île-Bizard during the historic floods. The city declared a state of emergency on May 7, and the army was called in to respond to a disaster on the island for the first time since the ice storm of 1998. A total of 36 families remain lodged in hotels while their homes are being repaired.
“The rapidity of the phenomenon made it seem that our plan and our capacity to respond was not sufficient to face this emergency; that’s when we declared a state of emergency,” Louise Bradette said at the meeting.
Bradette, the city’s chief resilience officer, presented a report with 46 recommendations on how the city can improve its response to disasters, based on what went wrong last May.
Among the problems she identified were different agencies, like the police department, the fire department
We are real people and we’re suffering, going through mental torture and nightmares.
and the city, all working on their own emergency response plans without proper co-ordination between the departments.
She also said there was confusion among the city and the boroughs on whose job it was to acquire sandbags and the city’s 311 telephone line was not equipped to handle a high volume of calls from citizens needing help.
To help attenuate future disasters, Bradette said the city has to redo its mapping of flooding risk areas, identify problems caused by building in flood zones and come up with a better way to forecast risks in the future.
At the meeting, several citizens also voiced concerns about the borough permitting development in the flood zones, saying it could contribute to future flooding risks.
Pierrefonds—Roxboro borough Mayor Jim Beis told the Montreal Gazette prior to the meeting the borough is conscious of the risks and will not be developing anywhere that could lead to further risks.
“No one is building on wetlands,” Beis said. “If there ever is an eventual project on any part of Pierrefonds West, for example, all that is for debate. By no means will we build at any cost.”
Beis said he believed a 5,500unit housing development proposed by former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre’s administration for the area near wetlands in the western sector of Pierrefonds could be developed responsibly. However the project seems to have fallen out of favour with Mayor Valérie Plante.
Beis added the borough has shored up dikes in the area, and has been making preparations over the last 10 months to ensure it can prevent future disasters and respond better in the event of a repeat occurrence.