By The Canadian Press

Montreal must become ‘sponge city’ as extreme weather to become more common

Jul 14, 2023 | 8:22 AM

MONTREAL — As Montreal emerges from a severe thunderstorm that flooded underpasses and more than 130 homes on Thursday, the city must do more to mitigate the effects of extreme weather, says a spokesperson.

In less than two hours, central parts of Montreal received a month’s worth of rain, as much as 85 millimetres, Philippe Sabourin told reporters Friday. The rain flooded underpasses, causing sewer overflows and potentially contaminating bodies of water, which he warned residents to avoid for the next 48 hours.

The storm also triggered what Sabourin said was the city’s first tornado warning as wind gusts of almost 100 kilometres per hour downed trees and knocked out power lines.

“We’ll need to collectively develop reflexes” to become more resilient to such weather events, he said.

Those reflexes, he said, could include building “immense” underground reservoirs to store surplus water, and more green infrastructure, such as parks and roadside gardens, which can absorb water and keep it from flowing into sewers. 

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“The idea is to build a sponge city,” Sabourin said. 

During the next torrential rainfall, residents should avoid low-lying areas, such as underpasses, he said; social media photos from Thursday’s deluge showed cars almost submerged under water on some roadways.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Hydro-Québec customers were still without electricity Friday morning, down from a peak of more than 300,000. Most outages were in Montreal and the regions to its south and north. The hydro utility said it could take up to two days to restore service to all customers because of the scale of the damage to the network caused by the storm.

Environment Canada has confirmed that at least one tornado touched down in Quebec, in a field in the city of Mirabel, north of Montreal, with no reports of damage. The federal weather agency is also investigating reports from Thursday of two more funnel clouds in towns west and northeast of the city.

A tornado Thursday that hit the Ottawa neighbourhood of Barrhaven damaged more than 120 homes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 14, 2023. 

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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Thomas MacDonald, The Canadian Press