Water, water everywhere...

Residents of Whiteway were caught off guard early last week when an unexpected amount of rain poured down on the Trinity South town of 300, washing out roads and flooding basements.

Small brooks were turned into raging rivers as the water made its way towards the harbour, washing out riverbanks in its wake.

Mayor Craig Whalen said the main road through the town near the road to Pitcher's Pond Golf Course sustained a fair amount of damage. Work crews from the provincial department of Transportation and Works had to install a new culvert across the highway, after it was partly washed out.

Mayor Whalen said the road wasn't rendered completely impassable, but traffic had to slow down considerably to avoid the rocks and debris that had washed onto certain sections of the pavement. And for a while there was one-way traffic in the area where the new culvert was installed.

Whalen said it was only the week before that town work crews had graded their local roads and put in some road gravel as part of the town's annual spring maintenance program.

In some places they now have to go back and do that all over again.

However, the mayor said local town roads were not damaged as badly as the main road because the town keeps its ditches clean of debris and grass as part of its regular maintenance program.

He recalled there was a time when the department of Transportation and Works kept the ditches along the sides of main roads through towns like his, clean and free of debris and grass. "And that goes for every community which has a main road running through it," he said, not just Whiteway."

But they don't seem to be doing as much of that kind of maintenance anymore, he observed.

Had more of that kind of preventative maintenance been carried out before last week's rain, allowing the ditches to handle the increased volumes, he believes the damage to the main road would not have been as heavy as it was. "If there had been more maintenance, this wouldn't have been as huge a problem as it was," he suggested.

Whalen was out of town working and was surprised by the amount of water running through his town and damage that greeted him when he returned home that evening.

Besides the damage to provincial and town infrastructure, dozens of residents sustained water damage mostly in their basements, which were flooded.

Relieved

Valerie Drover of Drover's Convenience was relieved to report that despite the more than two feet of water in the basement of their store, "the damage was not as bad as they thought it would be." Fortunately, the Drovers didn't loose any stock and the water didn't reach as high as their electrical panel box, which was their biggest fear. She said the local fire department pumped the water out of their basement and Shag Rock Manor also helped out with their pump.

Drover said her husband, Craig was up all night trying to keep the water out of the basement of their store.

Members of the Whiteway Volunteer Fire Department were also out in force around the clock pumping out basements in an effort to keep water levels down and prevent any further damage.

Cliff George was another Whiteway resident who had a lot of water damage to his property. George said the back of his house was "like a pond." With the help of Craig Whalen's backhoe, they dug ditches across his property and he is installing 18-inch culverts to take the water away from his property.

Worse than Chantal

Like many other towns around the province, Whiteway suffered some damage from Tropical Storm Chantal a few years ago. But last week's unexpected weather brought more rain than Chantal, and caused more damage (at least in White way), which was the hardest hit community this time around. Except for neighbouring Cavendish, which also had some flooding, other communities on either side along the shore managed to escape unscathed.

"You don't mind 20-30 millimetres of rain," but Whalen estimates between 80 and 90 mm fell on his town last week in a short space of time.

Not expecting the onslaught, he said they were "unprepared" for what hit them last week and, "it caught a lot of people off guard."

Compensation?

He's not sure if any funding will be available from either level of government (provincial or federal) for compensation, as was the case with Chantal. But he said the town council did contact Municipal Affairs and Emergency Services to see if we're eligible for any compensation. "They came out and looked at the damage, but whether or not we'll get anything out of it remains to be seen," he said.

He said private homeowners who suffered damage from last week's flood could also be eligible for help. Encouraging homeowners to contact their MHA to find out what if any assistance is available, he suggests, "the more people who call, the better chance they will have of getting something."

Cliff George said he would like to see the town acquire some government funding to install some kind of drainage system that would be able to handle the water that comes off the bogs and areas where it builds up during heavy rains like was experienced last week.

Meanwhile, looking back over the week, Craig Whalen said, "it was a rough couple of days, but after a clean-up day (Wednesday) things were getting back to normal, or as close to normal as they can get."