After the remnants of tropical storm Debby brought historic rainfall and flooding to Quebec, the province continued to deal with the fallout Monday.
Provincial police confirmed the death of a man in his 80s who went missing late Friday after a roadway collapsed and he was swept into a river in the Mauricie region. His body was found Sunday.
Debby’s tail end, combined with a low-pressure system, washed out roads, flooded basements and knocked out power across southern Quebec.
Environment Canada said many communities along the St. Lawrence River received between 100 and 175 millimetres of water from the downpour.
“An event of this intensity is very rare,” the agency wrote on social media Monday.
Quebec’s Public Security Department said in an update Monday that 52 municipalities were affected by the record rainfall and eight have declared states of emergency, with about 347 people still evacuated.
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High wind gusts left more than 540,000 homes without electricity at the height of the outages. Hydro-Québec reported that more than 3,800 clients were still in the dark as of 10:30 a.m. Monday.
Meanwhile, some roads were still inaccessible. In Montreal, a section of Highway 13 remained shut Monday due to damage from floodwaters. The Dorval tunnel was closed off to traffic in both directions between highways 520 and 40.
Quebec Transport Ministry crews were working to still repair the pumping station that was damaged during the storm. A spokesperson confirmed the highway won’t be reopened until Tuesday at the earliest.
‘It was like a fountain,’ flood victim recalls
Montreal was among parts of the province that received record-breaking rainfall, with more than 173 millimetres recorded on the western tip of the island.
In Île-Bizard, a suburb located west on the island, some families were left to take stock of the mess left behind. The area received 158 millimetres of rain.
Mathilde Roy was packing up her belongings Friday as she is about to move out of her parents’ home for university. That is when the rainfall flooded their house.
“And then we didn’t have anything to do because the water was coming from the window, and it was crazy, it was like a fountain,” Roy said.
On Sunday, they were trying to find what was salvageable — but Roy said her mother was sobbing after many of their belongings were covered in eight feet of water.
“There was a drawing that I had made at like two years old, and she was crying because we’ll never have that again,” Roy said.
— with files from Global’s Brayden Jagger Haines, Matilda Cerone and The Canadian Press
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