'I hope we don't think we won this battle:' City prepares for massive flood recovery

Ottawacitizen.com
May 10, 2017
By Jon Willing

A west-end councillor whose community has been flooded made an emotional plea on Wednesday for the city to keep supporting residents and reduce the bureaucracy that might block progress.

“We did a great job, but I hope we don’t think we won this battle,” West Carleton-March Coun. Eli El-Chantiry said during a council meeting.

“We didn’t.”

City manager Steve Kanellakos said staff are using a four-week planning window for the time it will take to restore communities affected by the floods. The city expects it will take several weeks for the river to recede to the original shoreline.

Kanellakos wants to cut through any red tape that would hinder momentum.

“The most critical piece right now is for us to respond immediately to residents’ needs and people need the authority in the field to make those decisions and not worry about making those decisions,” Kanellakos told reporters.

Several task forces have been struck at city hall to manage critical parts of the recovery effort, including garbage disposal, social services, infrastructure, communications and procurement.

“The immediate thing for us right now is to establish a presence at all sites,” Kanellakos said. “We are moving into the community centres with fully integrated teams. We’re going to have people that can answer questions, we’ll have radios we’ll be able to relay back to city services and get action right away.”

The city will also be educating residents about the contamination of their belongings.

“Some people have difficulty letting go of some of their possessions and we need to get things out for their own safety,” Kanellakos said.

Public health nurses have been deployed to all the flooding sites. The city is delivering bottled water to residents, since the wells are likely contaminated by the river water, and is looking to set up hand-washing stations and portable showers.

Most of the affected properties are on wells and septic systems, not on the municipal water and sanitary sewer network.

Kanellakos has experience with a large emergency response involving flood damage.

In July 2009, nearly 1,500 homes in west Ottawa flooded after the city received what was then considered a storm of the century. Sewers backed up, pumps shut down and culverts overflowed. Residents dismantled their basements, throwing out heaps of contaminated possessions.

Kanellakos said the 2009 flooding was intense because it was largely in an urban setting, with parts of Kanata getting hit the hardest.

“We’ve gone back and reviewed what we’ve done there,” Kanellakos said. “We’re also looking at Calgary. Calgary was the last good example of significant flooding and we’ve reached out to the Calgary municipality to see what have they done, what were the issues that came up for them, and we’re incorporating that into our playbook.”

Mayor Jim Watson said one of the great frustrations from the 2009 basement floodings was the accumulation of garbage on the side of streets that lasted for weeks.

“We’ve got to do a better job and a faster job of getting that debris out of the community as quickly as possible,” Watson said. The city has been sending dumpsters into the flood zones.

Watson reported Wednesday that 346 properties in Ottawa are affected and 155 families have evacuated homes.

Closing the gaps between flooded-out residents and potential solutions is also at the top of Kanellakos’s mind.

“That’s my biggest fear because when they are in that situation they’re already exhausted, they’re emotional, they are dealing with such a personal loss that waiting and having a gap in terms of asking for something and not getting it and not getting the information is the worst thing that can happen to those people right now,” Kanellakos said.

He said that’s why it’s important to have teams of city staff in the communities, rather than having all inquires come through city hall, which is far from the flood zones.

The city has established four information centres.

At the same time, the city is mindful of the conditions of its own infrastructure. Staff can’t make a proper assessment of the roads until the water recedes. Teams of engineers and contractors are getting ready to investigate roads and ditches. The city is being cautious about sending heavy equipment into the areas with soft ground to prevent further damage.

At some point, the city will need to consider how much money the flooding will impact its own budget.

Watson said the city should ask for provincial funding through a disaster program that helps municipalities afford emergency response and repairs.

“We haven’t been worrying about bookkeeping matters at this point. We just want to get in there and help people,” Watson said, but he noted that he has told Municipal Affairs Minister Bill Mauro that the City of Ottawa would be putting in an application for funding.

Council directed city staff to create a property tax deferral program for taxpayers affected by the flood. The idea would be to push off their tax deadlines until December.

El-Chantiry declared a conflict of interest on the tax deferral program since he’s personally affected by the floods in Constance Bay. He addressed the matter during the council meeting.

“Let me be clear. My wife and I live in Carp. That’s not our primary residence in Constance Bay. That’s our house, we’ve owned it since 1994, it’s winterized and we have a family friend living in it. She was rescued on Friday by the fire department. They didn’t want her to stay alone because of the situation,” El-Chantiry said.

“Just for the record, I think Coun. Moffatt (Rideau-Goulbourn Coun. Scott Moffatt) was there, and he said you’re the only house that doesn’t have sandbags around it. On purpose. Because I want to make sure the councillor and all staff and all the effort goes to everybody else.”