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Friday, November 20, 2009

Downtown Residents Deal With Flooded Basements Following Storm

2008/07/09 | CityNews.ca Staff

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You may have thought a giant yard sale was taking place on Alton Avenue near Queen and Leslie on Wednesday, that is until you noticed that the contents were all soaked with a crude mixture of raw sewage and water. 

A day after a fierce summer storm struck Toronto, residents in the area were cleaning out their flooded basements, drying out their contents on their lawns and trying to salvage what they could.

"This room filled up in ten minutes. I'm not kidding," said Sherry Shorthouse.  "There was a Persian rug on the floor and we were grabbing it, it was already so heavy from being wet, we could hardly drag it outside."

Many residents had to throw out the entire contents of their basements, and in many instances, insurance companies don't cover damage from sudden storms.

"I called the insurance company, and now they're giving us all kinds of different stories and we're going to see what we can do to fight this, but I don't know," said concerned resident Lydia Medeiros.