Crews work to restore power, transit service, open roads after record-setting rain floods Toronto

City crews, power workers and residents in Toronto and surrounding communities are cleaning up after a record-setting downpour turned major highways into rivers, caused widespread power outages, disrupted public transit service and flooded basements.

The Toronto region was hit with about 100 millimetres of rain in just a few hours on Tuesday, which was the fifth-rainiest day in the city’s recorded history. The flooding brought back memories of the city’s wettest day in 2013, when an intense thunderstorm caused one of Canada’s most expensive natural disasters.

The region’s two major electrical utilities, Toronto Hydro and Hydro One, report that around 5,000 customers remained in the dark on Wednesday morning, mainly in Etobicoke and Brampton. At the height of the outages on Tuesday, about 167,000 customers in Toronto didn’t have power.

The rain caused commuter havoc, shutting down several transit stations including Toronto’s Union Station and blocking major highways and streets, such as the Don Valley Parkway, the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard. All have since reopened after the flood waters dispersed.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow told a news conference on Wednesday morning that she appreciates the efforts of city workers who worked tirelessly overnight to clear highways and all other flooded roads from water and debris.

Ms. Chow said she is aware of residents and homeowners still dealing with the aftermath such as flooded basements and she urged anyone dealing with flooding in their home to contact the city’s 311 line. The city is still working on reopening community centres and outdoor pools, she said.

The Mayor added that the city is considering incentives to help residents recover, such as encouraging residents to make improvements to their properties to reduce the risks of flooding.

“Weather events like this are going to occur more frequently because of climate change and we must take action to build the resiliency of our city and work to mitigate the impact of these storms,” she said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the flooding “a significant event,” and said Toronto and surrounding areas need to be prepared for similar disruptions in the future.

“The reality is … that with climate change, there are going to be more extreme weather events,” he told an unrelated news conference in Toronto. “We also need to continue to be making investments in resilient infrastructure that can handle what the future is holding.”

City manager Paul Johnson said that before the storm, the city had been working with Environment Canada to predict the scale of the rain, but he said the impact was far greater than what was estimated.

“Clearly, the amount of rainfall in certain parts of the city far exceeded what we were anticipating given the best information we had,” Mr. Johnson said.

He added the city will review what happened this week as it seeks to find better, more effective approaches to mitigate the damage caused by severe weather in the future while also continue improving its systems and old infrastructure.

However, he said the city is better prepared now than it has been in the past, pointing to how quickly Union Station reopened.

The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority said water levels in the Don River were falling Wednesday morning. The authority said in a statement that some rivers within the GTA are still experiencing higher flows of water due to the heavy rainfall from Tuesday, causing hazardous conditions including slippery and unstable river banks.

It said people should exercise caution around all bodies of water and keep away from the slippery and unstable banks.

The authority said that at the height of the storm, an excess of 100 millimetres of rain was reported to have fallen in certain areas.

With a report from The Canadian Press.