It's been nearly two weeks since torrential rain drowned parts of Windsor-Essex, but now a Lakeshore councillor is looking to increase safety measures to ensure devastation like last week's flooding doesn't happen again.

Residents in east Windsor, Lakeshore and Tecumseh are still cleaning up flooded homes, some people are nowhere near done.

Lakeshore councillor Steven Wilder made a motion at last night's council meeting.

He's asking for a report to look into the viability of conducting an online data collection of residents hit by flooding, to prevent large scale devastation from occurring again.

“It's been pretty slow,” says homeowner Tom Sura. “It took about two weeks for the contractors and everyone to come to clean up. I finally got fans in my basement because they're low on equipment.”

Garbage bags full of belongings, even damaged furniture remain at curb sides, leaving some residents frustrated about how they were notified about the strength of the storm.

“I think there was maybe one warning for weather,” says Sura. “We didn’t even know about it.”

Massive flooding affected parts of Lakeshore.

“Obviously it was an expected amount of rain that fell in a short period of time,” says Wilder.

At Tuesday's council meeting, Wilder expressed the need for better communication.

"I don't know if we could have measures in place that would accommodate such a heavy and history rainfall,” says Wilder. “But that's what we're looking at what could be done to prevent this from happening again.”

Wilder wants the municipality to start an online data collection survey of residents, to see how and where people were impacted.

“It's important that we get the information and try to get an understanding of what happened and look for areas to improve.”

A lesson in communication that was learned by LaSalle, when an F1 tornado ripped through that town in August.

“I don't know what kind of alert system we're going to have to do,” says LaSalle Mayor Ken Antaya. “It's going to be something at the regional level we can advise quickly the property owners and it would have to be done through communication such as phone.”

Now that two major storm events have come and gone, local officials say they're working on solutions to be better prepared should another event like this happen again.

 

"The primary concern is to keep the community safe,” says Wilder. “Property can be replaced people can’t.”

Wilder notes three reports will be tabled at a future council meeting in Lakeshore.

Those reports will be made public, so residents can provide input.

Wilder and the rest of council can then determine how best to improve communication in the future.