By Chelsey St-Pierre
The Suburban

Île-Bizard Mayor Doug Hurley says the City of Montreal did not do its part in flood-damage prevention in the eye of the storm where speed is of the essence in an efficient response.

With 157 mm of rain hitting Île-Bizard in a twelve-hour period, Hurley told The Suburban that his staff were quick to hit the ground, however as a result of the Grands Parcs zoning under the responsibility of the City of Montreal, their capacity to significantly reduce some of the water build-up was limited causing additional damages to residences in proximity to those sectors. On the North side of the Island, on 1st and 2nd Avenue, 4-5 feet of water accumulated in the streets.

Hurley deployed his public security force to check on residents and assist the elderly. “People are reaching out to us for answers and we are doing our best to keep them informed, but we have no answers from the Agglo. This rain hit the entire island, this was not a shoreline issue like in the past. We needed to act quickly and we did by moving pumps from the street into the river and sending our crews out to assist residents. We knew we were taking a risk, because we moved the pumps without permission from the agglomeration, who unlike us, are on break outside of office hours. We didn’t have time to wait for answers. Human lives were at stake. What we could not do was shut off the valves in Les Grands Parcs and no one from Montreal, that has access, responded to that emergency in a timely manner, which contributed to more flooding that could have been avoided,” Hurley told The Suburban.

Hurley says the disconnect of the Agglo from municipalities and demerged cities in not a new problem and that this rainfall was one of many examples of that disconnect. “We should have emergency accesses to Les Grands Parc, or in my opinion, full range management. They decided to zone it under their responsibility but that makes no sense. We are here, we know what is needed when. Clearly, they don’t. It’s always like two opposing hockey teams going for the Stanley Cup. That does not serve our population.”

The Suburban reached out to the City of Montreal for a response but none was received by press time. n