Monday 8 July 2013

King Street W underpass flood, Toronto, ON

When I got home from work today, the sky was getting dark ... we knew rain was coming.

About 5pm, it started pouring a crazy heavy rain.  As it turns out, Toronto received more than 74mm of rain in an hour ... that's how much rain we usually get for the whole month of July!

The power went out about 6:15pm (it was out for just over an hour) and we ate supper by candlelight.  We heard lots of sirens so went outside and heard about flooding in our 'hood.

Gord and I grabbed our umbrellas and went to check out the bridge just south of us, west of Sudbury Street/King W.

This is what we saw as we rounded the corner about 7pm  ...


We walked over to get a straight-on look.


I initially wondered what was floating in the water ... then realized that these were the roofs of seven cars that were covered with water!  Eeek!


Needless to say, the westbound King streetcars were backed up and short-turning on Shaw.


We could see that the power was also off in the downtown core.


We walked back to check out the flooding under the bridge.


Though it continued to rain, once the water started subsiding, it didn't take long for the flooding to disappear.

7:17pm
7:21pm
7:26pm
7:31pm
7:33pm
7:39pm

Once the water was almost gone, horns of a couple of the cars started going off and the police turned them off.

7:41pm

Here are some of the people who had been in the car.  Gord spoke with them.  They said that the car ahead skidded in the water and stalled. They waited for only a minute and found water starting to come into their car. They had to climb out the window to escape and the water was up to their waist. Luckily police came by and waded out to help them escape. They were apparently in very good humour about it.


This guy was in one of the stranded cars and was interviewed by CBC.  Gord spoke with him.  He too had to climb out the window, with the water having risen quickly to his waist. As he waded to safety, he said one of the cars floated by!


Flights have been cancelled.  The subway system is shut down and they are running shuttle buses.  GOTrain has many trains stranded.  Lots of the highways and streets are flooded.

Crazy weather!

July 9 update:  Two of my pictures were used in this article by Collision Repair magazine.

4 comments:

Knit and Purl Mama said...

Oh wow! That's quite the flood! Hope the weather lets up soon.

Isabel said...

how scary!! glad everyone made it out safely.

Fizzgig said...

wow, that is some serious water! we have been getting a lot of rain too! what gives?

Dawn said...

Yeah Monday's storm was NUTS!!!! We even had a lot of flooding in Peel Region...houses up the street from me had up to 3 feet of water and sewage in their basements. Gross!