Warwick Township has declared a state of emergency after the second 100 year storm in 11 months.

Heavy rainfall – as much as eight inches over both Monday and Tuesday – led to the flooding of Highway 402 and the closure of four roads in the East Lambton township. Two of those roads – Arkona Road between Zion Line and Confederation and Kingscourt Road between London Line and Confederation – are still closed after portions of the roads washed out.

Acting CAO, Ron VanHorne, says there were 28 washouts along township roads. Some involved the gravel shoulder washing away, others took entire portions of the road. Two culverts were damaged as was the Parker Drain which runs near Nauvoo Road and Highway 402. VanHorne says that may have contributed to the flooding on the highway.

The township says a number homes and business were flooded.

“This is the second significant rainfall event in Warwick in 11 months resulting in the
municipality declaring a state of emergency,” Mayor Todd Case says adding many residents just finished cleanup of the aftermath of last August’s storm, only to have their homes
flooded again.

“I don’t have a count, but there’s many, many that have been affected again,” says Case. “The sad reality is, some have just literally got their situation from last August cleared up, and that are in same situation once again. So, it’s a very sad situation.

“Our farmers sell an awful lot of crop that went underwater, which is going to cause them financial grief.

“It’s just absolutely unbelievable how much water we’ve had in July to start with, and then you add an event like that on top of it this year, just incredible – and to have two of them within 11 months, it’s just crippling.”

By declaring the state of emergency, the township and local residents may be able to access to the Disaster Assistance for Ontarians Program.

It also allows the municipality to suspend its normal procedures for purchasing things like gravel, to speed up the repair work on local roads.

“If we had to go through the regular process of issuing an RFP …it could be months before we’d have somebody tend to this. So our guys are tending to the roads..They’re actually applying more gravel and looking at those roads now, the ones that are closed continue to be looked at and see what they need. So that’s a work in progress and probably still will be for the next few days.”

While the township has yet to tally the cost of the road washouts, Case says it will be well over $100,000.

Case says with changing weather patterns the only solution will be improving infrastructure to allow water to move faster to avoid the flooding. That, he says, could take hundreds of millions of dollars. Case says municipalities will have to continue lobbying the provincial and federal governments to provide more money for infrastructure if the problem wide-spread flooding in heavy rain events is to be solved.