Debby dumped 173 mm of rain on this Montreal town. Now, flood victims must clean up

Kaspar Schattke was out at a restaurant Friday evening when he found fast-rising floodwaters upon his return home on the western tip of the Island of Montreal.

The worst of the night wasn’t over, as his basement quickly became submerged in what he estimates was a peak of about 25 centimetres of water. There was too much for the sump pump to handle.

“The whole basement was entirely flooded,” Schattke said in an interview inside his house Monday, where he was ripping up the carpet on the lower level.

The remnants of tropical storm Debby battered southern Quebec on Friday, leaving a mess in its wake. It dumped record rainfall on Montreal — with an exceptional 173 millimetres on the town of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, where Shattke lives.

Schattke has his work cut out for him in the coming days. He tried to salvage what he could, but the flooding surrounded his books and his child’s toys. Important documents were hung up to dry.

“People living here for 25 years in the area say they’ve never seen that,” Schattke said.

Soaked carpets were in his hand as he continued to rip them up while he waited to hear back from his insurance company. Piles of black garbage bags, boxes and furniture sat on the edge of Schattke’s lawn.

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“We haven’t managed to reach the insurance yet in person. We did get to report the damage online,” Schattke said.

Schattke is far from alone. The streets are lined with heaps of ruined belongings from flood-damaged homes.

Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue’s Paola Hawa is in the same boat after Debby’s deluge led to an overflow in her own basement. Even with two sump pumps, it wasn’t enough to keep the water out.

The north end of the town, which Hawa says sits on clay, was particularly hard hit. Sadness and frustration have set in for many flood victims.

“We’re all doing what we can,” Hawa said. “I’m encouraging people and seeing a lot of people helping out neighbours.”

“That’s what builds community, unfortunately, situations like this. And we’ll get through it.”

‘It’s out of our hands’

The town immediately organized two garbage pickups this week to help remove trash “as quick as humanly possible,” Hawa added. Streets were also being cleaned Monday to remove the downpour’s residue.

While Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue was drenched in just a few hours by the same amount of rain the area would get in a month, the mayor says it’s time to prepare for future weather events in Quebec. There need to be more retention basins and outdoor surfaces that can sponge up excess rainfall.

“We’ve got to start now,” Hawa said.

Jacques Vallée moved to his home in 2003. Bad storms have brought heavy rain to the neighbourhood streets before, but Debby’s last gasps proved to be too much.

“We’ve never had water infiltration in the basement like we did this time,” he said.

Vallée was up against it. His sump pump overheated and stopped, so they tried using a submersible pump to help drain the water. That is when the power went out.

“We ended up going to bed and we said, ‘It’s out of our hands,’” he said.

A neighbour’s generator helped power the pump at 3 a.m. but “everything was wet and in puddles” in Vallée’s basement.

His son was there Monday as part of the cleanup as the family waits for what comes next.

It was a “minor disaster,” Vallée said, but he expects the costs to repair his home won’t be cheap.

“We’re worried about the expense of fixing it,” Vallée said. “We have insurance but there’s a limit on the insurance and it probably won’t cover everything so that’s worrying.”

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Flooding damage from tropical storm Debby closes part of Montreal’s Highway 13

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