Floodwaters took Rigaud woman's house but couldn't drive her out for good
A year after Ginette Côté's house was swamped by historic spring flood, she found a new one just up the hill
From her new yard at the top of a hill in the Baie de Rigaud area, Ginette Côté looks down on the deserted lot where her old house once stood.
"If I get flooded here, the whole neighbourhood will be gone," said Côté, a resident of Rigaud, 70 kilometres west of Montreal, for the past 34 years.
Côté chose the small bungalow she now lives in because it's close to her former property near the banks of the Ottawa River — but on much higher ground.
It's a relief for her to know she won't ever have to relive what happened almost a year ago when her home was swamped by rising waters.
"I went to sleep, and when I got out of bed, both feet were in water," Côte said. "I had three feet of water in my house. I lost everything."
Some of the most dramatic moments of the 2017 Quebec floods played out in Côté's neighbourhood: volunteers pulling people out of their homes into rowboats, residents being evacuated in the buckets of excavators.
After a tumultuous year, Côté is finally finding stability, but the recovery in Rigaud remains very much a work in progress.
Forced demolitions, confusion, delays
For every homeowner who has received compensation and moved on, there are myriad stories of forced demolitions, confusion over permits and endless delays.
Surinder Kundi says he owes his contractor more than $100,000 for gutting and completely redoing the basement of his 5,000-square-foot house on Chemin de la Pointe-Séguin.
"To start off, they were very good with the money," Kundi says.
The province advanced him almost $30,000 to gut the house, but since then, the payments have stalled.
"The contractor is just doing the work, on the hope that he's going to get the money from the government," said Kundi.
Owners of modest homes hung out to dry?
Under the terms of the compensation program set up by the Public Security Ministry in the weeks after the historic disaster, victims living in flood zones could claim up to $200,000 to repair their homes, provided damage didn't exceed half the cost of rebuilding from scratch.
For owners of more modest homes, the devil was in the details: it didn't take much damage to reach that 50 per cent mark if the house was of low value. Those owners had no choice but have their homes torn down.
Rigaud mayor says everyone must follow the rules
"It may not be fair, but it's a reality," says Rigaud Mayor Hans Gruenwald.
He said the demolished homes had been built in flood zones — something their owners should have considered when they moved in.
Gruenwald acknowledges the compensation process has been a bureaucratic nightmare for many Rigaud residents, but he says the various levels of government are doing their best.
"When you have a 100-year flood situation of this nature, nobody is standing by and investing billions of dollars for everybody to be ready."
Gruenwald says he gets emotional when breaking the news to residents that their homes will have to be demolished, but rules are rules.
In some cases, flood victims didn't wait for a permit before spending their own money on repairs to their damaged homes, and now they've been told their homes must come down.
"They spent that money. No, I'll rephrase that: they wasted that money and their energy," Gruenwald says.
So far, 37 homes in Rigaud have been torn down out of a total of 177 that were damaged. However, 40 per cent of the cases are still being evaluated.
Province struggling to close aid files
The province is also lagging behind on dealing with flood compensation files. As of last month, only 24 per cent of the 6,113 cases provincewide had been settled.
Recently Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux unveiled new measures to speed up and simplify the process for future disasters.
But that's little comfort to those who have already spent almost a year navigating the system.
Coiteux declined a request from CBC News for an interview, but Premier Philippe Couillard says they are now trying to tackle the remaining cases on a more individualized basis.
"Each case is known," Couillard said. "As soon as we know that we can act, we do act."
'I lived there a long time, and now there's nothing'
Côté knows she is one of the lucky ones.
The government buyout she got to leave her old home was enough to cover the cost of the tiny bungalow she bought in December.
"It's OK. I like it," Côté says. "I have to fix the roof."
In July, Côté saw the house she'd called home for 34 years get plowed to the ground.
"I went to watch it when they tore it down," she said. "It was strange."
Côte walks by her old property whenever she visits her friend who still lives at the bottom of the hill.
"I look at the yard, and it looks so big," she said. "I say to myself, 'I lived there for a long time, and now there's nothing.'"
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