Andrew Van Seggelen’s jaw hit the proverbial flood when he walked into the partially finished basement of his Winnipeg, Man., home during Tuesday’s wicked storm. “There was about six to eight inches of water, brown dirty sewer water, and all of my stuff just floating around in the basement,” he recalled. He knew the storm was going to be bad. He and his wife had raced home from work early to try to beat it, but the first raindrops began to fall on their way. As Van Seggelen heard the hail pelting his home as he cooked dinner, the hairs on his arms started to stand up. Still, he was shocked with the dirty, deep deluge he discovered when he went to check on his basement that was rapidly taking on water. “We did start panicking,” he said. “I strapped on my winter boots and put some garbage bags over those, walked downstairs and just kind of took a look to see if it was for sure coming out of the sewer or if it was coming through the walls or where it was coming from.” Luckily, Van Seggelen’s wife is an insurance broker with plenty of handy contacts for this sort of emergency. She got in touch with a restoration company who arrived within the hour. The water was receding, but they got to work vacuuming and bleaching the soggy basement, trying to mitigate as much damage as possible. While Van Seggelen has insurance, he fears for the countless other homeowners whose basements were similarly flooded. “But that’s my favourite part of Winnipeg,” he said. “Everyone seems to be helping each other out as much as they can, coming by with pumps if need be.” With files from CTV’s Joseph Bernacki
