Flash flooding causes damage in Barrie, Orangeville

Flash flooding hits Orangeville Tuesday’s storm flooded streets and basement in Orangeville, causing quite a bit of damage. CTV Barrie’s Katherine Ward reports.

The last month of weather has been tough on Heather McClinchey's pocket book.

Big storms over the last few months in Orangeville have flooded her veterinary clinic twice. Tuesday’s storm filled her basement with about six inches of water.

“Currently we are over $100,000 in damages. It's going to be at least $25,000 in damages this time. We have to replace the furnaces again that we just replaced five weeks ago,” she says.

Streets flooded, creeks overflowed, and cars were stuck trying to get through the high water. According to Mayor Jeremy Williams, more than 70 millimetres of rain fell in about an hour.

Williams says flooding in the south-east part of town is not a surprise.

“It is a low lying area. It used to be a swamp hundreds of years ago and that's where all the water goes to,” he says.

But in less than 24 hours later, it's hard to tell a storm was here at all. Just a few city crews cleaning up gravel, a handful of water logged parks, and the flattened grass but a shadow of how high the water rose.

“I will say that our systems were able to cope with it, and if you look today, everything is dry. The storm sewers did work, it just took a little bit of time.”

In Barrie, a portion of the “Restore” on Brock Street was flooded during the intense afternoon downpour.

Staff say they scrambled to move as many products and displays as they could. Despite their best efforts, the non-profit charity lost thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise.

Damage has also been reported in the Rosemont area, where parts of a barn roof were blown off.