Flood warnings
OTTAWA — Two of Canada’s biggest cities have declared states of emergency and three provinces have asked for federal help to fight rising flood waters as Mother Nature’s wet wrath of spring marches across central Canada and the Atlantic.
Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante said Friday after afternoon that her city had felt it had matters under control until a rainstorm dumping as much as 60 mm of rain on already flooded regions moved in.
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency for similar reasons Thursday, prompting the federal government to send 400 soldiers to help sandbag and aid in relief efforts to small rural communities on the west edge of Ottawa. Late Friday, they were also sandbagging the road to one of the city’s two water-treatment plants, the city said. Another 1,000 soldiers were deployed in Quebec earlier this week and 310 in New Brunswick.
Municipalities are calling for volunteers to help if they can — to fill sandbags through makeshift devices made from sawhorses and ladders and road pylons turned upside-down to make funnels; to haul the bags into pickups and wagons and trailers; and to pile them around homes and businesses in the hope they can keep rising rivers and lakes away.
Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the response “is an all-hands-on-deck, wholeof-government approach,” including from everyday Canadians.
“Emergency situations like these tend to bring out our better angels,” he said at a news conference in Regina. “The instincts of Canadians are to help each other. That’s who we are and that’s what we do.”
In Ontario, water regulators estimate the Ottawa River’s level will rise nearly a metre within the next few days, well above its peak in a 2017 flood that was thought to have been a once-acentury event.
The most serious flooding so far is in villages along the Ottawa River outside the downtown core. Ontario Premier Doug Ford visited Friday morning to meet homeowners and help fill some sandbags. He said the government is on “high alert” and has told Ottawa the province will help with whatever is needed.
“This is absolutely heartwrenching,” Ford said. “It’s one thing to see it on the cameras, it’s another thing when you talk to the people face-to-face — and it just rips your heart out.”
Ford also said having another 100-year flood just two years after the last one can be blamed on climate change.
“Something is going on and we have to be conscious of it,” he said.
The municipality of ClarenceRockland just east of Ottawa, as well as the towns of Bracebridge and Huntsville in the Muskoka region north of Toronto, have also declared states of emergency. Bracebridge Mayor Graydon Smith asked cottage owners not to check for damage this weekend. He is worried people will put themselves in harm’s way. “Don’t try and be a hero,” he said.