Ontario city declares state of emergency after ‘hurricane’s worth of rain’

A state of emergency has been declared in St. Catharines, Ont., after the city received significant flooding in the past week.

Mayor Mat Siscoe issued the declaration on Monday after a pair of storms brought more than 140 millimetres of rain early last week and then again on Sunday.

“This wasn’t one isolated weather event; this was a series of three very extraordinary rainfall events that happened in our community,” Siscoe said in a news conference Tuesday.

The first storm hit the city on July 21, then another poured rain down on St. Catharines from July 27 to 28. The city received a brief reprieve before more rain fell on Sunday.

According to the city, infrastructure, including roads, sewer and stormwater systems, was overwhelmed.

This led to flooding, which affected homes, businesses and city facilities. Significant property damage occurred, including shoreline erosion to private and public property.

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The city’s emergency operations centre has been active since last Tuesday morning, when the significant flooding began, to co-ordinate response efforts and support decision-making as the recovery process is ongoing.

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Crews are responding to urgent calls, assessing damage and making preparations for any additional rainfall that could come later this week. Catch basins and grates are being cleared where debris has been pushed, and obstructions are being removed from waterways to ensure water is moving to the best extent.

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The mayor said the emergency declaration gives the city more tools to co-ordinate the response and respond more quickly, and “strengthens” the city’s ability to seek more support from the provincial and federal governments.

In a video posted by the mayor on Instagram Sunday, before declaring the emergency, Siscoe was seen walking through his own flooded basement. He said the video was directed to provincial and federal officials, urging both levels of government to provide assistance.

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“No infrastructure can handle a hurricane’s worth of rain on Tuesday and then again on Sunday and our city is no different from the other cities in this country,” Siscoe said in the video.

Premier Doug Ford said in a post on X on Monday that the province was working closely with impacted municipalities in Niagara Region to provide support with flood recovery. He said this includes deploying Ontario Corps partners to assist with recovery, the Salvation Army to co-ordinate the delivery of cleaning kits and Team Rubicon to support debris removal.

Provincial officials are also on the ground in St. Catharines to help with its recovery efforts, Ford added.

The storms that hit the city in the past week produced two to three times the amount of rain originally forecast and Siscoe said by the time the second and third storms hit, the ground was already completely saturated.

“There was really no capacity left to absorb any of the additional rainfall,” he said.

In terms of volume, the mayor said the city received almost 400 mm of rainfall across the three storms “depending on the part of the city that you’re in.”

Siscoe said that while there may be questions if there were any blockages or maintenance issues that led to the flooding, he stressed the amount of rain was the issue.

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“The reality is that no municipal system in Canada is going to be designed to handle rainfall of this magnitude; it’s just not possible,” Siscoe said.

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