As climate change worsens rainstorms, are you at risk of a flood?
By Kate Allen and May Warren
With a three-foot high-water mark tattooed on her basement walls and an inventory of ruined possessions, Blair Audet lived for months in a fog of stress and fear. But later, looking at a flood map, she felt a new emotion: confusion.
The official map of Toronto’s flood-vulnerable zones showed that her neighbourhood was not in a high risk area. And yet stormwater had surged through Audet’s home. Some of her neighbours had flooded, too.
When Audet and her husband, Jon Salvatore, bought the house months earlier — their first home, and biggest purchase of their lives by far — they had done everything they could to protect themselves. Not content to rely on the sellers’ home inspection, they had a contractor friend do another walk-through.
As for assessing their flood risk, they peered down the closest major street and felt reassured they were on top of big hill — an unsophisticated analysis, with no real alternative. Now, Salvatore and Audet, who was five months pregnant, were tearing out sodden drywall and trying to salvage precious photographs. Audet was terrified the financial shock could cause them to lose their home, right before they welcomed their first child.
What the couple did not know — and what thousands of other Torontonians have no way of knowing — is that their home sat directly in the middle of a hidden flood risk.
