Lighthouse Mission dark following flood

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This article was published 08/05/2017 (3105 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A flooded basement has forced a downtown Winnipeg mission to temporarily close its doors.

Left without water and heat for the past week — and a damage estimate that may reach $50,000 — the normally bustling Lighthouse Mission at 669 Main St. will remain shut until repairs are complete, operations manager Joel Cormie said Monday.

“We’ve been out of commission for a week and it’s looking like we won’t be open again until early June,” he said of the longtime charity that provides meals, seasonal clothing and religious and community programming to local residents in need.

“Obviously, our main concern is for the community we serve. We do about 250 meals each day we’re open. (For the mission’s regulars) it’s sort of like imagining losing your kitchen and dining room and finding out you’re not going to have it for a month. It makes a big difference.”

On April 30, a staff member stopping in on an off-day discovered the facility’s basement — used for food storage and laundry — under more than 30 centimetres of water. A crushed drain pipe on the city’s property had sent enough water into the charity’s lower level to submerge and destroy the vital components of 10 freezers, three refrigerators, a laundry machine and the building’s boiler, Cormie said.

“It doesn’t take much to destroy that equipment, so they all had to go,” he said, adding there was some relief in the fact it was a clear-water flood and not sewage-related.

The dry goods were spared (they are stored on shelving), and staff and volunteers were able to distribute the frozen food to charities in the area before it thawed “to help out other agencies and prepare them for extra numbers they will be seeing,” Cormie said.

The damage was contained to the mission’s basement, and the buildings on either side of the mission remained dry, Cormie said. Lighthouse will reopen as soon as the water is back on and the freezers and frozen food are replaced.

“We’re counting our blessings, it could have been a lot worse (for the community) had this happened even two weeks ago,” he said during an interview in the mission’s empty dining hall. “Had we had to close in the winter, that would have been much more devastating.”

Lighthouse, which has been serving the city’s less-fortunate for some 40 years at its Main Street location, is normally bustling on a weekday afternoon. On Monday, the facility was silent, save for the low roar of industrial dryer fans in the basement.

“(Without water) you can’t do any cooking, you can’t do any cleaning. We’ve got no bathrooms,” Cormie said, adding the charity’s volunteer base has done what it can to get the building ready for the eventual reopening. “There’s only so much cleaning you can do with no water… some of them are having to sit on their hands for a little bit until we can get the doors open again.”

While Lighthouse expects the majority of the damage to be covered by insurance — “Most of this stuff we had was donated, so we are still navigating that a little bit,” Cormie noted — the charity is putting out a public call for financial donations to get everything back in proper order.

“We’re expecting we’ll need $20,000 so we are operational once the water gets turned back on and we can hit the ground running.”

Donations can be made via the organization’s website (lighthousemission.ca) or at 204-943-9669.

scott.emmerson@freepress.mb.ca