Be prepared: Residents in west end of region rush to get ahead of floodwaters

The flood of 2017 took a lot of people in Constance Bay off guard. They say they’ll be prepared this time.

Dozens of volunteers swarmed around pile of sand at the community centre on Saturday, filling bags and piling them into cars and trucks. The bags were taken away as fast as they could be filled.

Marlene Caicco was helping transport bags to her parents’ Bayview Drive home, which had basement flooding in May 2017.

“We’ve done some preventative work since then,” Caicco said. “We hope we don’t have to go through the process of cleaning up after a flood again.”

Karalee Shaw Plourde lost her house on Baillie Drive in 2017.

The house was across the road from the Ottawa River and did not have to be sandbagged. Damage was less obvious, but more ruinous, though. Water bubbled up through the foundation. Eventually the entire house was pushed off-kilter and became infested with black mould. Plourde and her two daughters were forced to vacate that 2017, and the house was one of two in Constance Bay that were demolished and rebuilt.

Plourde was on hand Saturday to help move sandbags. Because of the experience Constance Bay had in 2017, people are more prepared, she said. Last time, some didn’t realize the severity of the flooding until it was too late, so they had to be evacuated from their homes.

“Hopefully, we won’t have to go that route,” she said.

Gerald Jette has had a cottage and later a house in Constance Bay. When he built the house 30 years ago, he took no chances and built it to 100-year flood standards. Still, he’s also taking the precaution of sandbagging in 2019. “Water rises. This is not a new thing,” he said.

Chris Troughton, who lives in Kanata, said he had spoken to fellow volunteers from as far away as Kemptville.

“I would hope, if I were in trouble, people would help me,” Troughton said. “This is the true Canadian spirit.”

Up the river on Moorhead Drive near Fitzroy Harbour, residents were also filling sandbags there. Many homes and cottages on the waterside of the street were flooded in 2017.

Rob McClenahan lost his house that year. It has been rebuilt and is flood-proofed now. “We jacked it up five feet. We don’t want that problem again.”

Dave McKay was sandbagging around the back of his cottage, where floodwaters lapped up almost to the back steps of his deck. They’re higher now than they were at the same point in 2017, said McKay, who expected the floodwaters to crest on Monday or Tuesday.

“There’s still a lot of snow left to melt in Pembroke and Mattawa.”

McKay had only praise for the City of Ottawa, which has supplied sand and bags and even created  a contraption using upside down traffic cones to make filling bags easier.

The overflowing of the Mississippi River at Pakenham took even long-time residents of that area by surprise.

Brian Bourk took the precaution of sandbagging around the back of his house, where a creek, now swollen to a torrent, rushed through his back yard.

County Road 29, which passes though Pakenham, was closed overnight after flood water rushed across the road on Friday, but reopened Saturday morning. Margaret Street, running parallel to the Mississippi River, was flooded, as was a park on the waterfront.

“Usually it’s a stream for a day, then it’s gone,” Bourk said. “When I was about 10 years old, (the spring flood) came to first base at the baseball diamond, and it’s there again now.”

Sheri Crosby has lived on Margaret Street for about 35 years. Her family had four pumps running overnight.

“It has never come up like this before. The overflowing creek has never been like this before,” Crosby said. “It’s like a waterfall in the basement. We had to watch the basement all night. One of the pumps could stop.”

Brenda Deugo, who also lives on the river, brought muffins to comfort her neighbour. Deugo’s house has not been affected, but she has lived in Pakenham her 56 years and says this is the second-highest she’s ever seen the Mississippi flood. Typically in the summer, the water isn’t any more than hip deep and it’s possible to walk across.

The river often makes a sound, Deugo said, “but it doesn’t thunder like it is now.”

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