As cleanup continues from the flooding in Fingal, Ont. and the surrounding area, residents are about to get some help. Southwold Township mayor Grant Jones has been in conversation with Ontario Housing Minister Rob Flack and Ontario Minister of Emergency Preparedness Jill Dunlop and funding could be coming to those impacting by the massive flood this week. Jones will work with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH). If the province activates Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians (DRAO), residents can apply for assistance on uninsurable losses on a case-by-case basis. It is not intended to replace private insurance and is intended for overland water flooding, not sewer backup, according to Flack. “Maybe my deductible from my insurance, I could recoup that, so that’d be good,” said Fingal resident George Henshaw, who has a trailer full of garbage bags in his driveway after clearing out his flooded basement. Henshaw was one of dozens of residents whose basements flooded after what the township calls a one-in-250-year event. An estimated 145 millimetres of rain, or 5.6 inches, fell Friday morning after receiving a significant amount just two days earlier. “The next steps are getting our roads back in shape,” said Jones, who took CTV News to Centre Street and showed half the road washed away. “We have graders out and crews out, some dump trucks spreading gravel. it’s looking better than we thought it was going to be. They will have to go back and do some pulling some gravel out of ditches here and there with the motor at some point. But that’s not that’s a minor thing at this point.” After declaring a state of emergency, Jones said communities from all directions have offered help, including a conversation with London mayor Josh Morgan who offered support. Everyone is just thankful the rain stopped. “If we had another rain last night, we’d be having a little bit of a different story talking right now,” added Jones. Just over 10 kilometres south on the edge of Port Stanley, maintenance crews are working on The Bluffs Golf Club. It is closed for the weekend after they were hammered with rain. The gravel cart paths all need repairs after the flood and the water is finally starting to subside. “A lot of raking and a lot of hand work,” said Skylar Handley of the club. “Hopefully we can get up here with the tractor with the rake on the back and kind of take off most of the brunt force with us, but we’ll see what we can do. Almost every single one of the paths on the course is on a hill. So, every single one of them tend to wash out quite fast.” Water was flowing through the undulating fairways on the course and at one of the bridges, the drop to the bottom is more than 35 feet. The water has reached the bottom of the bridge. “It was absurd, the water was knee high deep,” added Handley. Back in Fingal, most residents contend a construction project to replace storm sewers ironically worsened flood waters. However, the municipality believes the township tested the new stormwater management pond in nearby Shedden. “It’s designed to 250-year event, and it actually breached it as well,” said Jones. “But it held, so we know we had that 250-year-plus event, but it worked the way it was supposed to, so we’re happy for that at least.” Henshaw isn’t taking any more chances with mother nature. “What I’m going to do is, I’m not going to hook up to the municipal drain,” said Henshaw. “I’m going to dig a hole here about six feet deep, three feet across and fill it with gravel and run my drain into that. If that ever plugged up again, all the water would back up into my house. So, it’s not going to happen.”
