Flood clean-up continues after 'major rain events' across Southwestern Ontario

The sound of water sloshing as Sarah Dontas’s shoes cross a waterlogged carpet in her Sarnia, Ont. basement.

She is waiting, what seems a lifetime, for workers to arrive and begin clean-up

“It's hard because we've been told not to touch anything. To wait. You're number 50 on the list.” Dontas says as she surveys the damage.

“Pictures destroyed, baby books destroyed, photos destroyed. Bassinets from when my kids were little, and now my insurance is telling me that there's a cap on how much they'll pay to restore everything. It's awful.”

This is the reality for hundreds of residents, many who did not sleep through the second night of torrential rain. Instead, battling the storm from overtaking their homes.

“We noticed water coming through the far corner of the house in the basement at around 11 o'clock last night and then from there as we were trying to clean that up more water was coming through the exterior from around the exterior of the house as well,” Jackie Wilson said as she was bagging up soaked insulation to be thrown out. “I must have filled that canister so much I lost count. So yeah, lots of water.”

The City of Sarnia says they had received over 100 calls by mid-Friday morning, and believe this might be one of the most severe rain events in recent memories.

Mayor Mike Bradley says they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars separating the sewers to help when these intense events occur.

“But we do get overwhelmed. You get these massive intense, that's the key the intense storms, which the system simply can't take it,” Bradley said.

The majority of the flooding occurred in the Sherwood Village, and Coronation Park areas, which isn’t currently seeing any sewer improvement work

“So it hasn't showed up as much in the past. But we are in the rest of this part of the city. Spending a lot of money separating the sewers, which in turn does take the pressure off places like Sherwood village,” he said.

The city also encourages residents to looking into a newly implemented initiative called the Basement Flooding Mitigation Program that can help protect them during major incidents like those seen during the last few days.