Amid the sound of steady, heavy rainfall in Montreal’s Saint-Laurent borough on Friday, there were also the sounds of generators and pumps filling the streets as residents and businesses tried to keep the floodwaters from building up.
Huge swaths of southern Quebec were drenched under torrential downpours throughout the day as remnants of Tropical Storm Debby soaked the region. The flooding was extensive.
“Today, when we arrived here, the water was just over here and everywhere. Truck was jammed, the car was jammed, and the store was full of water. About eight inches,” said Alain Daigle, owner of the Benjamin Moore paint store at the corner of Côte-Vertu Boulevard and Beaulac Street.
Daigle said in his 35 years of business, the store has never flooded — until last month’s record-breaking rainfall and again on Friday.
“We just restored the store … we were supposed to open Monday but I think we’ll postpone that again,” he said.
Flooding in Montreal on Aug. 9, 2024 as the remnants of Hurricane Debby hits the region. (Angela MacKenzie, CTV News)
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has parts of southern Quebec under a rainfall warning. As of 3 p.m., the weather agency said between 80 and 100 millimetres of rain had fallen in the Greater Montreal Area. It said an additional 50 millimetres of rain is expected to fall during the evening hours.
Montreal gets an average 94 millimetres of rain during the entire month of August.
Quebec’s transport ministry reported several road closures in the Montreal area due to water accumulation Friday evening, including the Décarie north expressway near Royalmount Avenue.
In Pointe-Claire, lanes on Highway 20 west near Cartier Avenue were blocked due to flooding.
There was also flooding on Highway 40 near exit 55 to Des Sources Boulevard.
The storm merged with a low pressure system over the Great Lakes and moved across southern Ontario and Quebec, prompting Environment Canada to issue alerts and warnings from Cornwall, Ont., to Quebec City about the risk of flash flooding.
Cars drive through water on a street during rainfall in Montreal, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. Environment Canada has issued a rainfall warning for the region. (Graham Hughes, The Canadian Press)
120,000 customers without power
Transport Quebec said it had prepared for this kind of weather by removing debris from the road, but when it comes to this amount of rain, no equipment can keep up.
“We have powerful pump systems, they’re up-to-date, they’re fully functional, but the issue is when we have exceptional amounts of rain like we’re having today and we had in July, no storm sewer system can take all of that water,” said transport ministry spokesperson Louis-Andre Bertrand.
The ministry is urging all motorists to drive carefully during the weather as the storm system passes over the region.
As of 8:00 p.m., Hydro-Quebec was reporting more than 120,000 customers were without electricity across the province. The harest-hit areas are Laval (47,000) and the Montreal (30,000).
A map of the power outages in and around the Montreal area as of 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, as remnants of Tropical Storm Debby pass over the region. (Source: Hydro-Quebec)
In Saint-Laurent, many homes flooded along Henri-Bourassa Boulevard and Norman Street. Firefighters helped exhausted homeowners pile sandbags and pump basements.
“The water kept coming up. Kept coming up, coming up. And the water overflowed,” said Harry Babaroutsis, whose basement was flooded.
Some parts of Quebec could exceed 120 millimetres of rainfall, according to Environment Canada.
The deluge of rain forced the cancellations of several events across Montreal, including some outdoor activities for Montreal Pride, including community day in the Village and Soirée 100 per cent Drag at Montreal’s Olympic Park’s esplanade, which is postponed to Saturday.
La Ronde amusement park also closed, as well the Granby Zoo east of Montreal.
The opening events for the hot-air balloon festival in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, southeast of Montreal, were postponed until Monday.
The non-profit day shelter, Resilience Montreal, flooded, according to executive director Nakuset.
Nicholas Minas, a convenience store owner in Montreal’s Parc-Extension neighbourhood, said he was checking the store’s basement for flooding before doing the same in his garage and his mother’s basement.
“I have to go downstairs and check every so often just because you never know when it’s going to happen,” Minas told The Canadian Press. “When it comes, it comes down and you can see that the sewers don’t necessarily suck it up fast enough.”
With files from CTV Montreal’s Olivia O’Malley and The Canadian Press