More than 100mm of rain falls on Montreal: floods homes, causes outages

Thousands of people in Montreal are without power, and some basements are inundated with water after heavy rain made its way through the region, causing flooding and outages.

According to Environment Canada, some parts of Montreal’s West Island and South Shore received between 100 and 150 millimetres of rain in just a few hours on Saturday.

“The situation is extremely serious,” said Dimitrios Jim Beis, mayor of the Montreal borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro.

He said his community saw numbers higher than Environment Canada’s report, estimating 150 to 170 mm fell in about two hours. The mayor added “several hundred” homes were severely flooded, and roads were closed in both Pierrefonds and Dollard-Des Ormeaux.

Communities in Pointe-Claire and Dorval have also been affected to certain extents, he said, according to his counterparts in those boroughs.

Hydro-Quebec said as of Sunday morning, about 4,500 addresses were still impacted by service interruptions.

The municipality of Saint-Constant, southwest of Montreal, had to declare a local state of emergency. The mayor lifted the emergency at approximately 10:40 a.m., but a statement said residents continue to be supported.

Montreal Fire Division Chief Martin Guilbeault said Sunday the department received about 800 calls since about 3 p.m. Saturday in the Pierrefonds-Roxboro and Dollard-des-Ormeaux boroughs with 300 homes flooded.

“The main purpose of the fire department right now is to make sure that everyone is safe and there’s no electrical problems,” Guilbeault said.

Basements will not be pumped by fire crews, Guilbeault said, unless it’s needed to reach electrical panels to shut off the power in flooded homes.

By Sunday afternoon, Guilbeault added about 3,000 more people should have power, which would likely reduce those without power to about 1,000 people.

Some evacuations did take place, he said, with about 15 people in cars needing to be rescued using boats. No people in homes needed help from the fire department to evacuate.

Officials said Quebec Public Safety Minister Ian Lafrenière promised to work to get residents the help they need.