Winnipeggers are dealing with a lot of water where water shouldn’t be, after a fierce thunderstorm pummelled the city with 117 millimetres of rain Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
The water inundated basements, made streets impassable and engulfed underpasses where vehicles were abandoned.
North Kildonan resident Michael Koncur heard water running in his basement, and when he went to check, he found water and sewage spewing from his shower drain.
“I got to the bottom of my stairs and I stepped on the carpet and it just squish,” he said.
“I look to my left and my bathroom is directly there and water was literally pumping up from my shower.”
He called a handyman friend for a suggestions on what he could do and the friend said the sewers are just overwhelmed “and all you can do is wait and hope it stops soon,” Koncur said.
“I just felt helpless.”
He then called his neighbour, who walked to his basement to check while on the phone.
“And then he was, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got water pumping up through my floor as well,’ and then he just hung up on me.”
Koncur got in touch with a restoration company at 2 a.m., and they said they had been to about 20 calls already.
The city received nearly 1,000 service requests to clear debris, respond to flooding and sewer backups, remove downed trees and repair damaged traffic signals, Mayor Scott Gillingham said in a news release around noon on Wednesday.
A major storm system started south of Emerson in the U.S. and cut north through Manitoba, drenching the Red River Valley and into the Interlake region.
Hailstones ranging in size from nickels to tennis balls were reported across Winnipeg, while in some rural areas, they were the size of baseballs, Environment Canada said.
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Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Peter Chura said 1,000 separate power outages were affecting 32,000 customers in the southern half of the province on Wednesday morning. Almost 20,000 of those customers were in Winnipeg.
“There are neighbourhoods in Winnipeg that were significantly affected by outages, and they stretched just all over the place,” Chura said.
There is no timeline for restoration.
“I wouldn’t venture [a guess] right now until we get a better idea about all the damages and to what types of lines, like are there major feeder lines that … will restore a large number of customers quickly,” he said. “We’ll get to those first.”
One problem is that Hydro sent a number of crews from Winnipeg and Brandon to western Manitoba’s Parklands region to help in the aftermath of storms and flooding there earlier in the week.
“I guess if there’s a silver lining to this storm situation last night is that some of those Parkland areas, especially around Swan River and Minitonas, were not as heavily affected by new outages,” Chura said.
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“But it does create a bit more of a challenge, that we’ve been moving crews around.”
The main message right now is safety, he said. People need to stay at least 10 metres away from a downed line and anything it touches, especially a large pool of water.
There were numerous tornado reports around the Red River Valley and surrounding region, but so far just one is confirmed to have touched down — in the Ste. Anne area, southeast of Winnipeg.
Although no unconfirmed tornadoes were reported in Winnipeg itself, the city was under threat, Environment Canada meteorologist Kyle McAuley said Wednesday morning.
“We were definitely at risk a few times … [due to] thunderstorms that were rotating pretty violently,” he said.
“This is by far the closest day, within a few years that I could recall, of a tornado hitting Winnipeg or being near Winnipeg.”
Churchill High School in Winnipeg was closed Wednesday due to flooding and major water damage.
Storms bring tornado warnings, hail, heavy rains to much of southern Manitoba, including Winnipeg
Southern Manitoba drenched in wild night of stormy weather, possible tornadoes
