We’re used to thinking of flooding as a spring problem: melting snow, swollen rivers, the usual suspects. But this summer’s Niagara storms are showing something different, well, something a lot of Ontarians are still cleaning up after. Between late July and early August, St. Catharines took nearly 400 mm of rain in a week, and Niagara-on-the-Lake saw 146 mm fall in under five hours overnight.
It makes sense why this catches people off guard. These aren’t slow-building floods you can watch coming, they’re flash floods from intense, localized thunderstorms, or huge low-pressure systems that inch along in a way that overwhelm storm drains and ditches before anyone’s had time to react. Basements filled, sump pumps failed, and municipalities ended up declaring states of emergency, not because anyone was careless, but because the volume of water simply outpaced what the infrastructure was built to handle.
ACEC-Members know current infrastructure can only absorb so much though. And this isn’t a conversation about building resiliency; it’s a conversation around your home and auto insurance. It’s worth knowing your property’s flood risk, keeping sump pumps and backwater valves in good shape, and having an emergency plan ready before the next storm rolls in, not during it. In times like these, it makes sense to check and double check your home, auto, or business insurance coverage, particularly what it does and doesn’t cover for water damage, so there are no surprises later. For instance, you may not be on a “sewered lot,” but that doesn’t mean you ‘don’t need’ sewer backup coverage. You’re the expert on infrastructure and we are the experts on home and auto coverage. It never hurts to ask an expert. StoneRidge Insurance Brokers can provide all the necessary info you need as these extreme weather systems become more and more the norm.
Storms like these are becoming less of an exception and more of a pattern. Planning ahead, on the engineering side and the personal side, is what keeps a bad week from becoming a lasting one.