Significant flooding that prompted declaration of emergency in Lakeshore Municipality has ended

Windsor, Ont -

A declaration of emergency that was declared in a portion of Lakeshore Municipality Friday, relating to flooding after heavy rains has now ended.

“Ending the declaration of emergency does not mean that the impacts to residents aren’t real and ongoing, only that we are shifting our efforts from emergency response to supporting recovery efforts. On behalf of Council, I would like to thank all staff that have worked tirelessly over the past few days to mitigate the impacts of this flooding” said Mayor Tom Bain."Heavy rains have impacted a number of residents and staff are moving quickly to respond to this significant weather event," says Lakeshore mayor Tom Bain in a release.

This declaration applied to the part of the Municipality that lies North of County Road 42 and West of Duck Creek.

Residents in a Belle River Neighbourhood were dealing with the cleanup Saturday morning.

“There was an inch of raw sewage all through the entire basement it was disgusting," says resident Evan Vanderheide.

“We stuck the pump in the toilet and running it out the window. it’s been keeping the floor dry enough but it’s coming out of the shower too.”

Several areas in Windsor-Essex received more than 100 mm of rainfall since Friday, prompting Bain to make the declaration.

“The situation was just that dire with so many people flooding."

Bain says the town received 175 flooding calls in the first half of Fridays storm.

"We had all available staff out and all our pumps out to make sure the pumping system was working, then adding extra pumps when possible to help pump things out."

The town is asking the community to avoid using water such as flushing toilets and doing laundry until the sewer system can catch up.

“In the town of Belle River where the sanitary sewers backed up and we’ve been trying to find out how is this water getting in there? And it kind of came to us last night, a lot of that water getting in there is through illegal hook ups...problem is there’s so much rain in the drains, (they're) just overflowing, they’re really old and they’re too small. Somethings broken, something has gone wrong here obviously," says Bain.

Vanderheide feels upgrades to the area sewers needs to be done.

"Everybody down in Lilydale and everyone on the lake roads, there’s a lot of people all over town will tell you the same thing the sewers need to be updated."

"We have plans to build new reservoirs for holding in large pumps where necessary," says Bain.

If you are experiencing flooding, residents are asked to call the town but Bain is asking residents to be patient.

“The volume of calls that we had and having all our staff out on the road and trying to help solve some of these problems that will get back to them, but it’s gonna to take sometime."

"Lakeshore staff will continue to be there to support those residents impacted by the flood," said Chief Administrative Officer Truper McBride.