Two weeks after torrential rain overwhelmed Ottawa neighbourhoods on Canada Day, the floodwaters may be gone, but the disaster is still impossible to miss.
In the Qualicum-Graham Park neighbourhood, dumpsters line the driveways of dozens of homes. Restoration crews in white protective suits carry waterlogged belongings out to the curb.
Water-stained furniture, drywall, children’s toys and family keepsakes sit piled on front lawns waiting to be hauled away. The steady hum of fans and dehumidifiers spills from open basement windows as residents begin what many expect will be months of rebuilding.
Penny Torontow answers the front door of her Beaumaris Dr. home with her ear pressed to her phone. She’s finally speaking with her insurance adjuster.
She estimates that, at the height of the storm, her basement filled with at least three feet of water. While the water drained within 24 hours, the damage it left behind remains.
“Everything that was in that water is kaputsky…it came in so fast, it flipped over appliances. But nobody died,” she told the Lookout. “People got it worse than me; some had nine and 12 feet. But what sucks more is that some people aren’t insured, which is heartbreaking.”
Torontow filed an insurance claim as soon as she saw the water level in her basement, but she has seen little progress.
“When I spoke to him on Thursday, the insurance adjuster, he told me I was going to be a high priority because of the amount of water,” she said.
The adjuster she was speaking with when she answered the door is the second representative from her insurance company that she’s been passed to in the nine days since the storm.
In that time, black mould has begun to grow in her basement. Lots of it. The insurance company said it wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because the damage could have been caused by a small leak in the ceiling of Torontow’s basement.
The mould in Penny Torontow’s basement a week and a half after it was flooded. Photo by Amanda McLeod.
But Torontow said that it is ridiculous. The previous problem has been repaired and resolved. It was small and nowhere near where the mould grew after the Canada Day storm. She said someone only needs to Google 'Qualicum' to find dozens of headlines about flooding in the neighbourhood.
"What does this have to do with that? There's no water here, it's bone dry," she says, pointing at a small cosmetic hole in the ceiling of the basement living room, over six feet above the baseboards and the mould growing along the bottom foot and a half of the walls.
"They're trying to tell me that that caused this mould," she said. "We never had any mould here. The water came through the drain, and they're telling me they won't cover the mould because of this."
The leak on the ceiling of Penny Torontow’s basement was fixed well before the floods. Her insurance company says it’s to blame for the mould, even though it’s nowhere near the section that was flooded and is now covered in mould. Photo by Amanda McLeod.
Torontow’s experience isn’t unique.
Since the Canada Day flood, social media has been filled with stories from residents in Britannia, Crystal Beach, Woodpark, Crestview, and Bells Corners waiting for answers to insurance claims, struggling to reach government agencies, or searching for information about what comes next.
According to the city’s own numbers, there have been 5,671 reports of basement flooding. It resulted in the removal of 2,100 tonnes of storm-related debris and the provision of temporary emergency accommodation to 100 residents. Emergency responders have also completed over 2,255 wellness checks.
Given the wide-scale damage, there has been frustration over what many have seen as a slow and disjointed response from both city hall and Queen’s Park. College
Ward Coun. Laine Johnson said it didn’t need to be this way.
Johnson says part of the challenge was that much of the flooding occurred inside private homes rather than on public infrastructure, making the scale of the disaster less visible at first.
“The flooding was on private property, so it was pseudo-invisible, but the 311 site crashed [due to calls]. We had signs that this was very deep, if not broad,” Johnson told the Lookout.
“There are a lot of people who haven’t said anything to 311 yet and are asking themselves whether or not they should bother. They should,” she added. “These 311 calls attach your address to the event…and we don’t want there to be a disconnect between what you’ve experienced and the city’s assessment.”
Johnson, along with Bay Coun. Theresa Kavanagh and Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Sean Devine plans to bring forward a motion at the July 15 meeting of the city council calling for a review of why so many basements flooded in what’s being branded as a once-in-200-year rain event.
On Facebook, Devine said his and Johnson’s Nepean wards accounted for 83 per cent of the 5,423 confirmed flood reports to the city. He’s not interested in a “broad investigation” — instead calling for focused deep-dives on worst-hit areas.
“From the anomalies in General Burns, the unbelievable damage along Graham Creek, there needs to be a thorough review,” said Devine.
For Kavanagh, the priority is to explore how Ottawa can better prepare for and respond to future extreme weather events.
“You keep asking why, why, why – and this amount of rain is off the charts, so we know that’s the biggest issue – but you know, how could this have been prevented? What can the city do [in future]?” she said.
Disaster response too late, says flood victims
When the Lookout visited with residents of Qualicum-Graham Park on July 10, every resident voiced the same frustration: Why was it taking so long for various levels of government to offer support?
Torontow said Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe first visited her neighbourhood on July 6 — six days after the rain dried up. He joined Johnson again in nearby Leslie Park on July 14 to speak with impacted residents.
Kavanagh, whose basement also flooded during the July storm, said residents felt ignored.
Ontario’s municipal affairs minister announced on July 10 that Ottawa would receive provincial assistance through the Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians (DRAO) program, but did not provide a timeline for when funding would become available.
Finally, on July 13, some answers came. Municipal Affairs Minister Rob Flack confirmed the Disaster Recovery for Ontarians (DRAO) program would open to residents facing losses not covered by insurance. But still, no dates were given for when people could apply or what areas would be eligible.
Under the program, homeowners and small businesses can be provided up to $250,000 to help cover recovery costs. The funding is only made available after the province designates a community affected by a sudden natural disaster that results in significant, widespread damage.
Flack said residents should thoroughly document any losses by taking photographs and saving receipts and records related to cleanup and repairs. He also recommends contacting their insurance provider as soon as possible to determine what expenses may already be covered.
During a news conference at city hall on Monday, Sutcliffe defended the provincial delay, saying it takes time.
“DRAO is not an emergency, immediate response program where funds are given out in the hours after an emergency has occurred,” said Sutcliffe. “As much as I’d like to see the area activated as soon as possible, residents who are eligible for funding will not be completing the process with their insurance company for many, many days, and will not be applying to the provincial government for many days after that.”
The lack of clear timelines and the city's lack of pushback to the province have been frustrating to Johnson. She thinks the city could have been quicker to seek assistance from higher levels of government in the first place.
Furniture and debris from flooded basements sit on lawns in the Qualicum-Graham Park community. Photo by Charlie Senack.
“It takes two – so how long did it take for the city to initiate what it needed to for the province to step in and respond?… It’s eleven days out now, and we’re still having this kind of wishy-washy finger-pointing thing between two levels of government that doesn’t give anyone any satisfaction,” said Johnson.
Is Ottawa prepared for large storms?
As residents work through insurance claims and begin the long recovery, the storm has also raised a broader question: Was Ottawa prepared for a flood like this — and what needs to change before it happens again?
Flooding is nothing new in Ottawa, but it has traditionally been associated with spring as melting snow swells rivers and threatens nearby communities. The Canada Day storm shattered that expectation.
Already under an extreme heat warning, the National Capital Region was hit by torrential rain beginning around 1 p.m. By the time the skies cleared, Ottawa had recorded 118 millimetres of rain, with some neighbourhoods receiving as much as 170 millimetres. The deluge cancelled Canada Day celebrations, flooded thousands of homes and marked the city’s second-wettest day on record, behind the remnants of Hurricane Frances in 2004.
Angela Keller-Herzog, executive director of CAFES (Community Action for Environmental Sustainability), an Ottawa-based non-profit organization that supports and advocates for effective environmental action, says the reality of climate change means Ottawa needs to prepare for more frequent and more intense extreme weather events.
“If you look at the city’s 2020 climate projections report, they clearly projected that there’s going to be a 15 per cent increase in intensity of rainfall by 2050, and we’re on that road,” Keller-Herzog said.
“It isn’t some weird modelling…if your temperatures are warmer, you have more humidity and therefore your rainfall will become more and more intense. In tropical areas, you have these heavy downpours, and that’s what we’re moving towards,” she continued.
The connection between climate change and increasingly severe flooding is well-documented.
A report published by the United Nations Environment Programme in May 2024 outlines how rising global temperatures are changing the planet’s water cycle.
“Climate change is affecting the hydrological cycle and increasing the frequency and intensity of storms. Over 90 per cent of ‘natural’ disasters are weather-related, including drought and aridification, wildfires, pollution and floods. They lead to death, injury, loss of livelihoods and displacement and place a huge burden on societies, economies and the environment,” the report says.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also reported that 2024 was Earth’s warmest year since global record-keeping began in 1850.
In the 176 years since then, the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2015, with “the rate of warming since 1982 more than three times as fast.”
Stephen Hazell, an adjunct professor of environmental law at the University of Ottawa and a member of Citizen Climate Council (C3), an Ottawa advocacy group focused on municipal climate policy and research, believes Ottawa deserves credit for recognizing the risks posed by climate change. Where the city has fallen short, he says, is in funding the solutions.
“The thing that [the city] has got right, and I want to give them full marks on this, is Climate Ready Ottawa. It’s a resilience strategy that was published late last year, and they’ve identified some of the real risks that Ottawa faces in terms of dealing with weather emergencies,” Hazell said.
“The problem is that there wasn’t nearly enough money associated with it. The city has produced several strategies that are all good documents, but the money attached to them is frankly like an afterthought,” he continued.
Both Keller-Herzog and Hazell say Ottawa’s housing priorities are increasingly colliding with the realities of a changing climate.
The housing crisis has pushed municipalities across the country, including Ottawa, to continue expanding outward to meet demand. New suburban communities have spread well beyond the urban core, often onto land that presents new environmental challenges.
At the same time, experts say floodplain mapping and stormwater planning have struggled to keep pace with that growth. Many new neighbourhoods are being built on land that has not been fully assessed for drainage capacity or “sponge landscaping” — an approach to urban design that uses highly permeable soil, wetlands and green space to absorb and retain rainwater before it overwhelms stormwater systems.
Traditionally, urban planning has relied on hard surfaces and underground pipes to manage runoff. During extreme rainfall events, however, that infrastructure can quickly become overwhelmed, leaving excess water with nowhere to go — as demonstrated during the Canada Day flood.
Hazell says the city is not adhering to its own official plan in this regard.
“The city, in conjunction with other folks, is working on completing the one in a 100-year and the one in 350-year floodplain maps and overland flood maps,” he said. “But where the vulnerability is, we don’t know, and we’re continuing to build on vulnerable lands. And you’re not supposed to do that under the official plan, because the mapping hasn’t been done yet.”
Keller-Herzog says there has also been resistance to expanding flood-risk mapping.
“There is resistance from the real estate sector – they don’t want detailed flood risk information out there because it’ll obviously start getting reflected in property values,” she said.
Torontow, a real estate broker, understands those concerns. She says the financial consequences of flooding often extend well beyond the immediate cost of repairs.
“When Glen Cairn had the floods in Kanata, it took a few years for people to get over the stigma that those properties had flooded. It becomes harder to sell your home.”
“There are people who have the money just to fix it,” she said. “But there are a lot of people who don’t have that kind of money, or insurance coverage, and now there’s a decrease in the value of the property. There are other consequences of this that are going to be felt long after.”
The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) says severe weather events resulted in insured losses of more than $2.4 billion in 2025. Six of the organization’s 10 costliest weather events that year involved flooding.
In a June 17 response to the Statistics Canada study Extreme weather impacts on consumers and insurers in Canada, December 2019 to December 2025: An updated analysis, IBC vice-president Liam McGuinty said, “reducing cost pressures in the home insurance market means confronting the root cause: rising risk. That requires a decided shift to adaptation – investing in resilience, building safer ways and locations, and taking action now to curb the growing damage of extreme weather.”
For Keller-Herzog, the Canada Day flood should be viewed as more than another weather event. She hopes it becomes a turning point in how Ottawa prepares for the future.
“This isn’t just like an isolated, you know, extreme weather storm. So we need to see it in the context of these mitigation plans and adaptation plans,” said Keller-Herzog. “I think it’s pretty clear that we need to expect more of these intense rainfalls. We need to target where the vulnerabilities are, and we need to be proactive in terms of warning the residents and sharing in the public domain that these are the vulnerable areas, so people know.”
With files by Charlie Senack
