As floods continue to damage many WestMan communities and threaten others, many residents are having to learn more about both protecting their property and restoring it than they’d ever wanted to know.
Flood waters and severe weather, including eight tornadoes so far, have affected much of Manitoba this summer, and river levels are not expected to crest for days so the worst of the effects may still be ahead. After a severe weather event, a quick assessment can be very important.
“With extreme weather, there can be risks from a lot of angles,” said Jim Mandeville, senior vice president at First Onsite Property Restoration. “You’re really going to be wanting to look around the outside of your building after every one of these severe storms to make sure the wind hasn’t displaced anything. If it looks funny, something is probably wrong. Look at your roof, go across the street for a look, look at the siding and things like that.”
Mandeville has worked in property restoration and dealt with natural disasters across Canada for over a decade and has seen just about every major disaster in that time firsthand. And while Manitoba is an area that certainly can see flooding, it’s been rare in his experience to see it this dramatic.
“We’ve seen bad flooding in Manitoba before, the way the rivers work and the way the land is it’s almost part of life in this part of the country,” he said. “But it’s certainly the worst it has been in very many years, and that gets magnified because as time goes on our communities get bigger, we build new communities, we build houses where there used to be farm fields, we don’t always do the best job of anticipating what’s going to happen when the weather gets bad.”
One thing Mandeville warned homeowners against is trying to do-it-yourself their way out of flood repair. Some things can be fixed relatively efficiently, but a fully flooded home is not likely to be one of them.
“If you spend three days trying to do it yourself, you hurt your back and it’s still not done and then you finally call somebody really all you’ve done is cost yourself more money because it’s cheaper today,” said Mandeville. “When water gets into a building and damages your flooring, your drywall and all that stuff, the longer it sits, the worse it gets.”
Because flooding is a definite possibility in much of Manitoba, there are some steps home and property owners can take ahead of time.
“The day it’s going to flood, there’s not a lot you can do other than getting your valuables out of there and making sure things are off the floor,” Mandeville said. “If you’re doing a renovation or considering a renovation, you always want to keep resilience in mind. If you’re going to renovate your basement, think about things like ‘what if water does get in here?’. Maybe tile or vinyl flooring instead of carpet. When you get a new hot water heater, elevate it so it’s a couple of feet off the floor. If you get a new furnace consider the same thing. And if you’re on a city sewer system, I recommend everyone invest in what’s called a back-flow preventer. That’s a valve on your main sewer line that stops water from coming into your house when the system gets overloaded.”
Mandeville added that water receding doesn’t mean the danger has passed for property owners. He recommended good, professional post flood cleaning to avoid these.
“The real risk is the thing that aren’t obvious,” he said. “If water ends up in your house, generally speaking it’s not clean. You can have bacterial hazards or viral hazards, there can be a lot of scary things that can be in that water than can impact you or your family’s health. The other thing is, if you have water in the house and especially if you clean it up yourself, often times we have found moisture in walls and floors. If it’s not properly and professionally addressed, you’re going to develop a mold problem.”
