‘The city is not designed to handle this amount of water’: Official says little could have been done to prevent Toronto flooding

Toronto’s city manager says little could be done to prevent the widespread flooding caused by Tuesday’s record-breaking rainfall, adding that the city “is not designed” to handle these type of storms.

Major highways have now reopened and hydro has been restored to the vast majority of homes and businesses in Toronto following the Tuesday’s deluge that left roadways and buildings across the city inundated with water.

A section of the Don Valley Parkway was closed for about 18 hours along with a stretch of the Gardiner Expressway and Bayview Avenue, which remained closed on Wednesday.

The closures, along with a slew of weather-related transit disruptions, caused commuter chaos for Torontonians on Tuesday.

“The challenge is much of the city is not designed to handle this amount of water that is coming down,” City Manager Paul Johnson said in an update at city hall on Wednesday.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said Toronto Fire crews responded to 1,700 calls for service on Tuesday, rescuing people from elevators and rising flood waters on city streets and highways.

“We are very thankful for these emergency services people,” she said. “The city crews worked overnight to repair everything, to clear the debris.”

The inclement weather also led to a massive power outage across the city, with Toronto Hydro reporting that 167,000 customers were without power at the peak of the outage. In an email to CP24 on Wednesday morning, the utility confirmed that power has been restored to the most homes and businesses in the city. As of 5 p.m., 2,000 customers were still waiting for the lights to come back on.

In a news release issued Wednesday, the city said water levels in the Don River are now “falling.”

“The city will continue inspecting bridge, culverts and guardrails throughout the day,” the news release read.

TTC service is operating normally today, although Metrolinx reported some GO train issues due to flooded tracks.

Union Station, which experienced massive flooding, is now fully operational. Retail and food courts at the downtown transit hub are also open.

On Toronto Island, the city said, there is flooding in various low-lying waterfront parks.

“The impact won’t be known until the water recedes in the coming days,” the news release noted.

According to the city, a small number of its pools and community centres remain closed Wednesday due to “flooding or a loss of power.” As of Wednesday afternoon, all of the city’s outdoor pools had reopened, although some city-run camps and recreation programs were cancelled as a result of the flooding.

The city is urging residents with flooded basements to reach out to 311 for advice on how to proceed.

Rainfall totals exceeded 100-year storm mark

Johnson said while Toronto’s emergency management program had been activated prior to the weather event, the storm unfolded in unexpected ways.

“Some parts of this storm hit certain parts of the city in a way that was nowhere near predicted when we started to look at how of the storm was going to roll through,” he told CP24 on Wednesday morning.

“In parts of the west end where lots of the power failures and flooding happened down by the lake, we were receiving rainfalls that were above that 100-year storm mark. And in other parts of the city, it was just a little rain storm.”

The city saw nearly 100 millimetres of rain within a three-hour period on Tuesday.

Johnson added that while the city’s water treatment plants did have to go on “some form of diversion” on Tuesday, the water and sewage systems did not fail.

“There were moments yesterday where our systems were simply overwhelmed… when it becomes overwhelming for those systems, some of it does get discharged only partially treated,” Johnson said.

“It is something we continue to work on. I will say, years and years ago, it was a lot worse. We’d have much less storm activity that would cause much more sewage to be discharged. So it is never something we want to see happen from an environmental perspective. But it is much better now than it was before. But when you get that amount of water in that short a period of time, there is little we can do.”

He said the city did all it could to prepare for the heavy rainfall.

“These are tough days but it is also an example of how the city does work really well,” he added.

“Things like this have happened in Toronto before. They unfortunately are going to happen in the future as well.”

Chow, who also spoke to CP24 on Wednesday morning, said the city is taking steps to prevent flooding in the future, noting that work is underway to divert the Don River into Lake Ontario as part of ongoing flood mitigation efforts.

“Climate change is real and in fact we’ve seen data that tells us these kinds of huge rainstorms are going to double in number in 15 years,” she said.

‘It could have been a lot worse’

During an update at city hall on Wednesday afternoon, Johnson fielded questions about the timing of the closure of the DVP and whether the roadway should have been shut down sooner given the number of motorists who became stranded in their vehicles due to rising flood waters.

He said the impact to motorists “could have been a lot worse.”

“The pivot to action limited pretty severely the number of vehicles that were impacted,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse had we not been having the coordinated and integrated approach.”

Johnson was also asked about the recent renovation of Union Station and why more wasn’t done to protect it against flooding.

“There isn’t a piece of work that could have been done at Union Station to stop the water that was flowing there. Our crews were out to clean it up as quickly as possible to deal with the situation,” he said.

“I don’t even know why we talk about 100-year storms anymore because that definition seems to have flown right out the window. We’ve had three of them in the last 11 years… The challenge is much of the city is not designed to handle this amount of water that is coming down.”

Speaking to reporters at an unrelated event in Toronto on Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thanked first-responders, city staff, and hydro workers for their continued efforts to reopen roads and restore power to residents and businesses.

“It was significant event and I want you to know that we are all there to work together to make sure that not just people get supported through this but that this happens more and more infrequently in the coming years,” Trudeau said.

“The reality is though, with climate change, there are going to be more extreme weather events. So we need to continue to step up on our fight against climate change. We also need to continue to be making investments in resilient infrastructure that can handle what the future is holding.”