A decade ago, Toronto was underwater. Here's what's changed since the 2013 flood
More than a month's worth of rain fell in just hours on July 8, 2013
Flooded streets, destroyed basements and a GO Train stuck in so much water that passengers had to be ferried to dry ground in inflatable boats — 10 years after Toronto was pounded by a record-breaking storm, many can still remember where they were when it happened.
The storm on July 8, 2013 saw at least 300,000 Toronto residents hit with power outages and about 1,400 passengers stranded for hours on a train filled with water. It also highlighted the need for more investment to help prevent flooding.
A decade on, that's something the city says it continues to prioritize.
Craig Mitchell, acting associate director of engineering services with the Toronto Region Conservation Authority, says he was at the G. Ross Lord Dam that afternoon when 126 millimetres of rain fell in the span of 90 minutes. The downpour was more than the amount of precipitation Toronto would get in an average July.
"As you can imagine, that much water falling in an urban environment creates a lot of run-off and the associated problems with all of that," he said.
"That night we were in storage mode, and we were trying to store as much storm water as we could, trying to prevent downstream flooding."
Mitchell says the storm sparked new major investments from all three levels of government into maintaining the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority's flood infrastructure, including work being done in the Port Lands.
'Rocks the size of cars' moved hundreds of metres
"We're re-establishing the natural mouth of the Don River. And the idea behind that is we'll create more capacity so that during these large events, more water can get to the lake without causing flooding," he explained, adding climate change is at the forefront of most conversations in the flood community.
"We are trying to build the systems bigger and larger to sort of anticipate for larger storm events in the future," he said.
Jennifer Drake, an associate professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Carlton University was working at the University of Toronto at the time.
"I remember going down to the Humber River during the rainstorm and seeing how much it was inundated," she said.
"It was what we call a channel mobilization event. You had rocks that were the size of cars that were part of bank hardening that had picked up and moved hundreds of metres," Drake said, adding multiple homes on her street also had flooded basements.
She says there is much more happening today to identify where those vulnerable areas are, which is the first step to coming up with solutions.
"It was really fascinating to live and see first-hand because it's the kind of event, as an engineer, we would teach about and learn how to design our infrastructure for," Drake said.
Storm brought changes to home insurance
Suzanne Pountney, president of the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario, says one of things that exacerbated the slow response time was the fact that teams in Ontario were sent to Calgary the month prior, to help deal with that city's flood before Toronto was hit.
"It was this scramble to figure out how to protect the people, the property owners, how their insurance was going to kick in," she said.
And at that time, there was really no coverage for overland water, she says.
"A lot of policy holders had coverage for sewer backup...but a lot of people didn't have coverage for their damage because of how the water came in," Pountney said.
That's since changed.
"Within two years of the Toronto floods, virtually all of the standard insurance companies were offering some kind of overland water coverage."
Pountney adds that insurance companies have also been collecting data on areas more prone to flooding.
Toronto now more resilient: city
The city says in 2014, following the storm, council approved the expansion of several existing programs to help Toronto be more resilient in the face of extreme weather.
That includes a basement flooding protection program meant to reduce the risk of basement flooding through a combination of public drainage system improvements and the use of policies, by-laws and incentives to reduce flood risks on private and public properties.
"Mitigating the risk of flooding for residents, as well as climate resiliency, continues to be a key priority for Toronto Water and the city, " the city said in a statement.
The city says programs expanded as a result of the 2013 severe storm continue to make significant progress.