A Vancouver mother is thankful childcare providers acted swiftly to move her napping toddler from a flooding basement Monday after a water main break at Oak Street and 29th Avenue.
“Within an hour, there was three feet of water inside the daycare in the basement where all the children were sleeping,” Mahla Finkleman said.
WATCH: Water main break in Vancouver
Finkleman’s one-and-a-half-year-old son goes to Little Munchkin Daycare, just steps away from the main scene.
“A lot of the other children woke up before my son did, maybe because they were wet, but when the other children were awake and crying and screaming, my son was fast asleep through it all.”
Finkleman feared the worst when she heard the water main break was right near her son’s daycare.
“They grabbed him and took him upstairs. … They heroically moved all the children upstairs very quickly to escape the floodwaters, saving all the children’s lives. If it weren’t for their fast actions, God only knows what could have happened.”
But the mother of two said when she got the call from one of the childcare attendants, all seemed calm and taken care of.
WATCH: Parents scramble to find childcare after storm badly damages Maple Ridge daycare
“They were very, very well-equipped. They handled it with tremendous grace and pride … By the time I got there, all the children were dressed in their spare pair of clothes. Some of the children didn’t have a sufficient spare pair of clothes and they were wearing summer gear — whatever they had left in their cubbies for an emergency situation.”
Management at the daycare said it is waiting for permission from the local health authority to move its toddler program from the basement to the main level where another program already operates, which could raise issues of overcrowding.
The toddler program at the daycare remains closed for now. Finkleman said she currently has no options.