Edwin Steele’s heart sank when he checked the livestream from the security cameras inside his Mississauga business.
Saturday opened with partly sunny skies in many parts of the Greater Toronto Area. But in a matter of minutes, threatening-looking clouds moved in. The downpour that followed was unforgiving.
“I was watching it on the cameras as the water level was rising. It was quite quick. … We got about 18 inches of water here in the shop,” said Steele, principal engineer at Metonics.
The facility, which is located on Queensway East near a creek, housed geotechnical mining equipment and Steele’s car — both of which were submerged.
This is the second time the shop flooded this summer. He estimates losses this time at around $800,000.
“(My reaction was) just disbelief. The fact that it’s happened again, and so soon,” Steele said.
Less than a month after catastrophic flooding in Toronto, parts of the GTA were once again submerged under rainwater Saturday.
Toronto Pearson Airport recorded 128.3 millimetres of rainfall that day, according to Environment Canada.
Given that the airport gets an average of 78 mm of rain through the entire month of August, the downpour meant the airport saw more than a month’s worth of rain in the span of hours.
Not only that, the totals have broken a record previously held since 2013, for the highest amount of rainfall ever recorded in a single day at the airport.
Minutes away from the Metonics facility, Joann Valentine, who sits on the property’s condominium board. stood watching a hose pump water out of a residential parking garage.
“It was nothing like I’d ever seen before,” she said.
The underground lot houses 112 cars belonging to residents of an apartment building on Queen Frederica Drive.
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Saturday’s rain was so severe that it torpedoed a steel emergency exit door to the garage, sending water barrelling through.
“It was about two feet at the most. … Now it’s down to four to six inches,” Valentine said Sunday. “We’ve been pumping water out since 7 o’clock last night: four pumps going, two of them have burned out from being over-used.”
Scenes of Mississauga fire fighters rescuing stranded pedestrians amid gushing currents received international attention.
“The call volume, comparatively, was two and a half times what we normally see on a Saturday,” fire chief Deryn Rizzi told Global News.
On Saturday, the team rescued 22 people stranded in water, and eight others in elevators.
The following day, water rescue units once again ventured out to stranded motorists on Highway 410.
The fire department was prepared to handle the calls without calling for additional back up, Rizzi said.
It was however unable to assist with requests from neighbouring authorities, as its resources were at capacity.
Seeing cars floating down roadways so soon after mid-July’s flood isn’t surprising to one University of Waterloo researcher.
“We will keep experiencing storm after storm after storm,” said Anabela Bonada, who studies climate adaptation measures. “Our oceans are hotter than they’ve ever been. All that moisture is going into the atmosphere.”
Bonada said floods like those in the GTA are caused by powerful storms cooked up through climate change. The devastating images signal an urgency for municipal infrastructure to get up to speed, she said.
If it doesn’t, the cost to taxpayers could be huge.
“For every dollar in catastrophic losses that are paid out by the insurance company, the municipality pays three to four dollars,” Bonada said.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimated July’s flooding in Toronto could cost insurance companies $1 billion, added Bonada, which could mean $4 billion for tax payers.
As for this weekend’s storm, the city of Mississauga says its too early to tell.
“Assessment of damage begins right away, and then there are longer term evaluations of what steps and measures need to be taken going forward,” said Helen Noehammer, director of works operation and maintenance.
Both the cities of Mississauga and Toronto are updating their stormwater systems to withstand more rainfall — a crucial step in the right direction, Bonada said.
However, Bonada said there are things that should be avoided, like developments around flood-prone water bodies.
“The Don Valley is a perfect example. It’s meant to flood, it is known to flood. If we build in those areas where the river would have naturally flooded, then we’re putting our buildings in that flood path,” she said.
In the short-term, Bonada said infrastructure needs to be built with water-absorbing materials, and away from creeks and streams.
For homeowners, some helpful mitigation measures include cleaning out drains around the home twice a year, buying a sump pump, and installing water wells around basement windows if possible.
