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A month-long investigation has found the city failed on several levels to immediately help west-end flooding victims last month.
City councillors are grilling senior staff on why the city didn’t appropriately respond to the July 24 flooding that caused sewage to back up into the basements of hundreds of homes in the west-end.
Deputy City Manager Steve Kanellakos told city councillors that the “lapse” in response to victims is “troubling.”
Kanellakos said there is no way to pinpoint where exactly the failure occurred and who is responsible and that there was not a good sense of what was happening in the west end.
He said employees from seven city departments could have escalated the flooding disaster response but no one realized the extent of the damage that was occurring despite hundreds of phone calls to Ottawa’s 311 information phone line.
“There was a lapse of judgment,” he said.
Kanata North Coun. Marianne Wilkinson is angry that the city spends millions of dollars on its emergency measures plan and couldn’t effectively help the more than 1,000 property owners who experienced flooding.
Wilkinson said she is concerned that when the extent of the flooding was brought to the attention of deputy city manager Nancy Schepers during an event in Carp by three city councillors the day after flooding occurred, nothing was done.
“That makes us all very nervous,” said Wilkinson.
Schepers told council that more than 25 city staff are working to find solutions and that the city’s recent investigation concludes that basements flooded in the west end because of older infrastructure.
Schepers also told council that “current standards are sound, post 2004.”
With 800 claims being made against the city, mostly from insurance companies, the city says it may not be liable. For someone to successfully sue they would have to prove the city was negligent in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of its drainage system.
A city report concluded there are “no deficiencies in the design or construction of the sewer and drainage system” and that the “sewer system operated as designed and there were no failures caused by lack of proper maintenance.”
The fact that flooding has happened several times may also not be enough to prove negligence.
More than 60 claims have been made from residents who are not insured.
derek.puddicombe@sunmedia.ca