'I'm devastated': Harrow residents lament property damage from heavy rainfall

Flooded basements in Essex County Local restoration companies are overwhelmed with calls from desperate residents with flooded basements. Rich Garton reports.

Hundreds of homeowners in the communities around Lake Erie woke up Thursday morning to water in their basements.

One of the worst examples had to be in Harrow, where approximately 185 mm of rain fell overnight.

The Underwoods woke up to a dry basement, but pooling water in their front ditch grew over the course of the morning — pushing a monsoon of overland water into their basement.

“The water keeps coming and I’m don’t know where it’s coming from. I don't know because the rain has stopped and I don't know what’s going on,” said Maria Underwood, who lives along King Street.

“The fridge has tipped on its side,” said Underwood, noting the water in their basement is waist high. “The hydro is still on and I'm waiting for hydro to come and disconnect the hydro because I can smell electrical down there. Water keeps coming and it's not dropping.”

Their entire property around the house is underwater. A rear garage where they store a number of classic cars was also partly submerged.

“I’m devastated. It’s awful,” she said. “I just can't imagine what it's going to be like cleaning up after and getting through all this trouble,” said Underwood.

Guy Drouin is also dealing with water, but his came up through the sewer around 3 a.m.

“My sump pump started beeping. And I thought it wasn't working but it was and it just couldn't keep up to all the water and it just kept rising and rising and rising,” said Drouin.

When the sun came up, he said the water on Arthur Street in Harrow was four feet deep.

His basement, and many around him, filled up with backwater. Now, he’s hoping his insurance will cover the damage.

“Pretty much everything in there's toast,” he said. “I'm feeling pretty disgusted, actually.”

Adealno Ferreira, who lives a few doors down, doesn’t plan on going through insurance, but wants the Town of Essex to “do better.”

“Hundreds of people got flooded, my neighbour got flooded, that one got flooded, that one got flooded, we all flooded,” he said.

According to Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy, the town is dealing with hundreds of reports of flooded basements.

“A lot of people started messaging me early in the morning saying their sump pumps couldn’t keep up, you know the roads are flooding and in some places we have sanitary backup, unfortunately,” Bondy said. “So, the side ditches on our streets, our pumping stations just could not keep up to the amount of storm in such a short period of time that we got.”

Mac Goslin of Reliance Home Comfort said his call volume was “staggering” Thursday, but said the flooding is easily explained.

“The sewers are full and when storm sewers are full, that water has absolutely nowhere to go but down and down is your basement,” Goslin said. “And if you don't have a backwater valve, there is nothing stopping that water from being at the bottom of your staircase.”

It’s not limited to Harrow. There are reports of basement flooding across the county.

The Town of Essex is surveying the area, hoping to learn from this event and avoid it in the future.

“We’ll start to take an inventory,” said Bondy. “Figure out what else do we need to do, work with other possible stakeholders and see how we can go forward making this better.”