Brief but heavy rains caused chaos in the greater Montreal area yesterday morning and then in the afternoon, flooding viaducts, basements and garages.
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“It looked like a lake!” said Véronique Lachance, who was on her way to work along Boulevard Lacordaire at around 7 a.m. yesterday morning.
Below the viaduct, cars drove through what looked like a small river, their tires submerged in the water, an orange cone floating on the surface, a video shared on social media shows.
“Some of my colleagues arrived late,” continued the woman who works for the IGA of the Sénécal market in Saint-Léonard.
Water also collected under the viaduct on Rue Masson in Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie, where firefighters responded in the early afternoon, Le Journal reported.
A little further away, residents of Montreal North were left with both feet in the water due to sewage backups in their neighborhood.
“The garage was completely full,” said a resident who did not want to identify himself.
“It went up so high that it came out of my garage,” he added.
In Centre-Sud, Mélissa Salija implemented her emergency plan at 6:55 a.m. in the bathroom in the basement of her house, which was flooded for the fourth time in three months.
“We’re really at the end,” she said.
“All ground floor units were affected. It builds up in the shower, in the bathtub, in the toilet bowl,” added Frédéric Rosin, who lives in the same building.
Firefighters overwhelmed
The Greater Montreal area received between 20 and 35 mm of rain in just two hours in the morning, followed by another episode of heavy rain and thunderstorms in the afternoon.
Montreal Fire Department firefighters were inundated with calls at both times of the day.
“We were overloaded with calls twice,” reported spokesman Alain Laflamme.
Due to the heavy rain, firefighters were dispatched to more than 100 locations throughout the day.
“We had gatherings in garages and basements,” said Patrick Morin, dispatcher for the Laval police department, which received 19 calls.
– With TVA News