ST-CLET – Life slowly started returning to normal in St-Clet Wednesday, a town of 1,700 people, as firefighters continued to monitor floods that caused a dozen people to evacuate their homes Tuesday.
“It began at six in the morning and the water just kept rising,” said Jean St-Denis, who lives on the hard-hit Cite de Jeunes street.
St-Denis was lucky, he has two pumps in his basement that kept his home dry and meant that he could stay and watch as the street he lives on turned into a river.
“I’ve never seen it go this high,” he said of the water level.
The last time this Monteregie town has seen this sort of flooding was in 2001. A contributing factor to this sudden deluge has a lot to do with unique conditions presented in the midst of a long winter, said Etienne Boucher, a geography professor at the Universite de Quebec a Montreal.
READ MORE: Rising waters in Vaudreuil-Soulanges close roads in village of St-Clet
“The flooding is very rapid, severe, intense… and it’s very hard to predict,” he said.
A lot of built-up ice, coupled with warm temperatures and rainfall contributed to the flooding.
“The ice cannot be evacuated downstream. It can’t be flushed, it’s too thick.”
The town is positioned between the St. Laurence River and Lac St-Louis, and sits on a plain.
Quebec Public Security says emergency workers visited more than 200 homes that appeared to be at risk during the floods as a precautionary measure. Around noon Wednesday only one or two residents had not returned home.
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