Like hundreds of homeowners in the city’s west end, Jeff and Cathy Flanagan spent most of the weekend cleaning up after Friday’s downpour.
The Flanagans had around two feet of water in their basement after the cap on the backup flow pipe burst open releasing a “geyser” that quickly turned the room into a wading pool.
Over the weekend, the city received 275 calls for water in basements, according to Michel Chevalier, the city’s manager of wastewater and drainage operations.
“We strongly encourage people to call us when they have water in the basement. We need to know who was affected by the flood,” said Chevalier. “If we have one house with a sewer backup, it means one thing. If we have 20, it means something else. We need to know what the situation is so we can prevent it.”
Acting Mayor Doug Thompson said city staff are monitoring the situation.
“It’s unprecedented, the amount of rain that we’ve had. I feel that city staff are a bit puzzled why this has happened. Obviously there is a problem out there,” he said. “We’re going to be reviewing that to see what can be done to prevent it in the future.”
Chevalier said Glen Cairn, Stittsville and Castle Frank, were the most affected areas. Many houses on Landswood Way reported a couple inches of flooding, but few were as badly flooded as the Flanagans’.
Jeff said he still doesn’t understand why his house got so much water while his neighbors had a couple of inches or none at all.
“We got the brunt of it,” he said. “The hardest thing is the kids are losing all their stuff. They don’t understand that it’s eventually going to get replaced,”
On Black Bear Way, Jason Puncher said a house from every homebuilder in the area had some flooding.
“It was just carpet damage, but it leaked into the drywall,” he said. “We’re going to have to rip out two feet of wall for half the basement.”
