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The city of Ottawa is conducting an analysis of how the neighbourhood of Orleans fared during Wednesday’s flash storm, to determine the success of a sewer system overhaul five years ago.
Road crews had to work to unclog sewers that flooded several main roads. The water was so deep that cars stalled on the street and Orleans Boulevard had to be shut-down, and a stretch of it repaved on Thursday.
The half-hour suppertime thunderstorm was highly localized: bone dry in Kanata, flash flooding in Orleans. The tempest left downed trees, tore the roof off historic buildings and caused power outages in east Ottawa and Gatineau as lightning, heavy rain, strong winds and hail reportedly the size of marbles rolled through the region.
The city says it received only one complaint of a flooded basement, though at the Bob MacQuarrie Recreation Complex in Orleans, a sewer pipe exploded inside the building.
“There was a big flood. It went down the hall, in the gym, at the front desk,” Camille Guertin said. “It was crazy.”
Lynn LaBresh, who lives on Belcourt Boulevard, said her basement flooded, but the water didn’t come in through the sewer but her foundation, which she acknowledges she neglected to fix in 2006 as per the city’s recommendation.
“My whole driveway was flooded, my garden was flooded too, and inside the house, well I had so much water damage it was not fun.”
Rainer Bloess, a municipal councillor in the area who supported the storm system overhaul in 2006, said that while streets were awash in rain water, the important thing is that homes were almost entirely spared.
“For the most part people didn’t have flooding this time around,” Bloess said.
Another neighbourhood resident credits city-installed “swales” — shallow gullies at the edges of properties — with keeping the flash floods at bay.
“I didn’t think too much of it originally when it came in, but I was glad to see that it created some assistance yesterday,” Al Caouette said.
At the height of the storm, which brought 100 millimetres of rain, Ottawa city hall says 120 traffic signals were flashing or out altogether. About 4,000 Hydro Ottawa customers were without electricity, while some 1,500 people in Gatineau were also without power. Fierce winds ripped off part of the roof of a three-storey Gatineau apartment building, blowing the roof onto a neighbouring home, while in Sarsfield, Ont., the top of a steeple blew off a church. Lightning is believed to have started two Ottawa fires, one on a residential roof near Montfort hospital, the other at a shed on Loggers Way near Dunrobin Road.
As of Thursday morning, Hydro Ottawa was reporting no outages, while Hydro Quebec said some households in Gatineau remained without power as of Thursday evening.
Copyright © CBC 2011