66 basements flooded after Thursday’s storm

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2013 (4670 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Home owners sustaining damage to their homes after Thursday’s heavy rainfall will be on the hook for their own repairs as the City of Winnipeg says the city sewers were simply overwhelmed.

City of Winnipeg spokesman Bill Watters said the amount of rain in the short period of time that it fell exceeded a 1-in-100-year capacity.

“It definitely is far beyond the capacity of our storm sewer system to handle and our combined sewer system to handle an event like that,” said Watters, who is a field service operations engineer.

“It’s not a city sewer problem, it’s a rainfall intensity problem. The rainfall that fell in this particular area would exceed a one-in-a-hundred-year event. Nobody builds sewer systems to handle a one-in-a-hundred-year event.”.

He said as of 9 a.m. the city had reports of 24 homes with raw sewage in the basement and 42 homes with clean water in the basement.

Those numbers are expected to change as the day goes on.

Watters said the sewers have all been checked and are back to normal.

City numbers showed 55 mm of rain collected in some areas.

Watters said the areas most affected Thursday were the River Heights, Tuxedo and Charleswood areas.

For flood protection, home-owners are encouraged to have backwater valves, sump pumps and proper lot grading.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca