REGINA - Residents of Regina woke up Friday to some flooded-out streets and underpasses and even some flooded basements.
At City Hall, the city’s Acting Executive Director of Citizen Services Kurtis Doney reported the city saw two storm events that resulted in an average rainfall of 1.5 inches of rain.
One storm event happened in the early evening and then the other happened during the early morning hours, with heavy rain associated with the system.
Doney said the safety of city residents was the city’s top priority. City crews were responding to situations where streets were flooded and where it may be flooding businesses. Crews had worked through the night, and they continue to respond, he said.
The wastewater treatment plant responded well to the surge in water, and is working as designed and accommodating all flow, Doney said. Retention ponds have also worked as designed, and is storing the storm water until the system allows it to recede.
The city is “strongly advising” staying away from flooded areas, retention ponds and storm channels, emphasizing these are not places to play in.
City crews have been out clearing the over 22,000 storm drains in the city. The city is encouraging residents to go out and clear their own storm drains if safe to do so. The City will continue to monitor situation and give updates at Regina.ca/storm.
Doney reported there have been several flooded streets. Those include the underpass at Ring Road and Ross Avenue, the underpass at Albert Street and the underpass at Broad Street.
He said city crews responded early in the morning and have since cleared those locations.
The Ring Road had been closed down during the day Friday. Also, heavy machinery was deployed at the Albert Street underpass to help present people from driving through the flooding.
Some projects will be delayed due to the ground conditions and will be restarted when the time is right. Doney also said residents should adjust their travel plans
More rain is in the forecast and Doney said the City is prepared to respond to changing conditions. He said residents can go to Regina.ca/storm for updates.
As far as damage, Doney said “nothing of significance occurred with our infrastructure.” Regarding the retention ponds, they will store water for about 24 hours and then start to release it once the storm system has less water in it.
But one issue from the rain is that the soil becomes saturated. “If we do have more storm events in the near term, we will see more flooding because the water really can’t get into our clay soil.”
Regarding the underpasses, and what can be done about flooding and cars potentially getting stuck, Doney says the short term plan is to educate people not to drive into storm water situations where you might not be able to pass.
In the medium term, they are working with SGI to have a “flooded” indicator on the Albert Street underpass so if it does flood, it would take control of the traffic lights and prevent people from going into the underpass.
The city is also still collecting data on how many homes and or businesses have been flooded.
Doney does say that he expects the storms last night were more significant than the ones that had the previous Saturday, in part because the clay is saturated and they are getting more flooding for that reason.
