FLOODS SWAMP TECUMSEH HOMES, STRAND RESIDENTS
Waters began receding shortly after noon
The rushing waters lapping ever closer to his Woodridge Drive home in Tecumseh also carried Tony DeLuca along back to the 1970s to recall the last time he’d experienced anything like Thursday’s flash flood.
Back then, piling up sand bags in his yard was a regular part of his flood defences, but Thursday the roads went from clear to disappeared in an hour.
“I have over a foot of water in my basement,” said DeLuca, who has lived on the street since 1976. “I had to take my rain boots off because it’s so deep they filled up.
“I’ve got a lot of damage. I’m hoping my furnace is OK.”
DeLuca’s neighbour Bud LaBranche waged a successful battle against the flood waters for a couple hours thanks to an upgraded sump pump and a temporary two-foot vertical pipe he put in his floor drain.
However, the rain water proved overwhelming and eventually gushed across the basement floor. He conceded defeat with a glass of red wine and sat on his front porch to watch Old Man River flow by.
“I’m getting flooded, just a couple hours after a lot of people,” said LaBranche, a 20-year resident of Woodridge. “The sewers just can’t keep up.”
A little before 9 a.m., residents got an emergency call from the town asking everyone to remain at home with several of Tecumseh’s streets being impassable. Patillo, Manning and Tecumseh were all singled out as roads to avoid. At mid-afternoon, the school boards cancelled buses home for students in the Tecumseh area.
Parts of Little River, a main thoroughfare in the area, remained closed until after 3 p.m. with stalled cars sitting in over two feet of water near the road’s intersection with Lacasse Boulevard.
Residents said for the most part, their sump pumps held up, but water surged in through storm drains and downstairs bathrooms.
By mid-morning, the torrential downpour was sending geysers shooting out of the town’s overwhelmed street sewers. The water soon created a two-foot-deep creek about 25-30 metres wide across the street. “I tried to get out this morning around 7:30,” Lindsey Wilbur said. “The roads weren’t that bad then. It came up fast after that.”
Shortly after 8 a.m., the ditches that run on either side of Manning Road, north of St. Gregory Road, burst their banks spilling across lawns and the road into Lakewood Park.
Several of the large homes in the housing development under construction in the park had their basements flooded.
The side streets off Manning also soon began filing with the overflow and storm sewers were choking with the gushing flow.
Just how quickly the water was moving at one time was evidenced by the flotilla of garbage bags and rubbish bins that were drifting along with the current.
“It’s come up the driveway nearly as far as the flood in the ’70s,” said Woodridge resident Murray McLennan, watching the waters ebb nearly 20 feet up from the street. “My son is saving my butt right now. He’s brought over a pool pump to help me get the water out of the basement.”
By about 12:30 p.m., with the rain having let up, the water began to recede in some areas of Tecumseh.
The first sign of normalcy returned about an hour later when the garbage trucks rolled down the streets as scheduled, sanitation workers strolling halfway up lawns to collect stray bags deposited by the waters.
“I’ve got three bags on my lawn, but only one is mine,” DeLuca said. “I’m glad I’m insured.
It’s come up the driveway nearly as far as the flood in the ’70s. My son is saving my butt right now. He’s brought over a pool pump to help me get the water out of the basement.