‘I lost so much’: Mississauga residents still feeling effects of 2024 summer flooding

Karri Siemms gazed out from her kitchen window into the mayhem. Her backyard, which extends to the Little Etobicoke Creek, had quickly been turned into part of an urban lake. 

On the morning of July 16th, rain poured down across Mississauga. The water level of the creek kept climbing, breached its muddy banks and spilled free. It consumed the Applewood Hills Greenbelt trail that runs parallel to the small tributary before the backyards of the homes abutting the creek were swallowed by water, completely submerged. 

Top: entire subdivisions in eastern Mississauga were flooded last summer; bottom, fire and rescue crews had to evacuate some residents.

(YouTube; Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services)

At 10:22 a.m. water rose to the edge of the creek and by 10:47 a.m. it overwhelmed the paved trail. It rapidly rose and moved  toward their backyard. It receded momentarily, bringing a short sense of relief, before a second wave inundated the entire yard within 30 minutes.

It didn’t stop. 

Like a burst dam, the water was relentless. It flowed into the house, covered the basement and washed over the family’s belongings.

(Submitted)

Karri rushed downstairs as the water kept coming. 

“So that ensued to panic,” she tells The Pointer. She tried to shovel the water away. Her son shifted electronic equipment to the main floor…“he was racing to do that, and we were both panicking.”

“The first one was pretty quick and then it's like nothing happened. By 1:20 the sun's out. By five o'clock we were sitting there going, ‘did that really just happen?’”

There would be a second nightmare.

Two “once in a century storms” nearly a month apart engulfed Mississauga last summer and many other parts of the GTA. In both extreme weather events, water overtook the streets and corridors of concrete-covered municipalities, causing chaos. It closed roads, overwhelmed city stormwater systems and led to an evacuation of more than 100 seniors from a Mississauga nursing home. Rain came down like a waterfall, in walls of water, flooding underpasses and highway corridors, leaving residents stranded in their cars. It caused widespread property and infrastructure damage.

Following the aftermath of a major flood in 2013, Karri and her husband Craig were forced to rebuild their basement. It had been ruined, along with everything in it. 

“I lost so much,” Karri recalls. “So much.”

“I had some memorabilia too, which was all destroyed,” Craig adds. 

Following the flood in 2013, Karri said she learned that anything that goes in the basement has to be in plastic bins and off the ground. While her experience a decade ago managed to save most items that were stored away, preventing them from being swept up in the chaos in the July event, the first flood destroyed all the cabinetry in the basement. With all their bins moved temporarily to the ground, the second downpour less than a month later caught them off-guard. It caused widespread flooding in August, and after the bins were lifted and tipped over, many of their belongings were once again ruined. 

“There's nothing you can do. It just started picking everything up and moving it all,” Karri says. 

“Now I can't store anything in the basement, so everything's up here or in our upstairs, and so it's basically devastated the entire house, because now we're living in absolute chaos and it's not going to get better anytime soon.”

Craig and Karri Siemms are still coping with the impacts of last year's summer flooding that swamped neighbourhoods across Mississauga.

(Paige Peacock/The Pointer) 

The couple has been left battling the emotional and financial fallout of the storms that deluged their property. Dealing with the insurance company has been frustrating to say the least. For the July flood, Karri said it took two weeks to hear back from their insurance provider and in August, it took five weeks for the company to get back to them to confirm whether they were covered. They went seven days without hot water and had to use space heaters as the colder weather approached, driving up their hydro bill. 

A lack of coverage has left them mostly paying out of pocket. What they didn’t know is that since the 2013 flood, their coverage for flood damage had not been renewed. 

While the Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians (DRAO), a provincial program, is meant to help recover costs from unexpected weather events, such as flooding, Craig said it covers only the bare minimum. He told The Pointer while they are grateful for it because they would have otherwise received nothing, “it's not enough.” 

Since they submitted their application to receive funding, they have been told the Province will only cover the vapour barrier and insulation, which Karri said translates to roughly $2,000. They have not been able to get a straight answer on whether the fund will help with the furnace, hot water tank or mould remediation. 

The situation, Karri said, has left her “exhausted and frustrated and anxious.” Meanwhile, they are paying a very high premium on insurance as they now have to have overland flooding insurance — an optional form of coverage on top of standard home insurance that protects homes from damage caused by surface water flooding, such as from overflowing rivers, lakes, or heavy rainfall. 

“One thing nobody's talking about with the victims of this is the amount of time and the amount of stress. I'm just so done with this,” Karri says. “I lost my entire summer. Our entire summer was gone. Totally uprooted. The devastation is just unbelievable.”

Nearly a year since the first flood, they still don't know what kind of funding reimbursement they are going to get.

“Now honestly, we're terrified of rain,” Karri says.

“When it rains, I get anxiety,” Craig echoes. 

Fighting to find the words, Karri said, “the devastation is…I can't even explain to you how much the devastation is. Now we don't even want to live in our house. I loved my house. I absolutely loved my house.”

Last summer was the wettest ever recorded at Pearson International Airport with 475.8 millimetres of rain as of the August 17 storm, breaking the previous record of 396 millimetres reported in 2008. By comparison, the average summer rainfall at Pearson, documented between 1991 and 2020, was 222 millimetres; more than half that amount fell on August 17. It surpassed records previously broken by similar flooding a decade earlier, which had foreshadowed a reality that was swiftly approaching in the face of the changing climate. 

Eleven years after the 2013 flood that devastated large sections of the GTA — a weather phenomenon considered extremely rare — many of the same neighbourhoods experienced storms in July and August even more intense than a decade earlier. The total rainfall from the July storm combined with rainfall days before was 220 millimetres, approximately three times the average amount for the whole month.

Linda Blakely, who has lived in Applewood Acres for over 30 years, describes the downpours as “a mini tidal wave.”

“We ran to the basement, tried to lift as many things we could up off of the floor, some electronics, although this time we weren't able to save much and it did seem like the water was rushing a lot more,” she says of the July flood. 

When the August flood hit, Blakely and her husband Greg were on their way to Ottawa when she saw a photo posted to Facebook of flooding along Dixie Road and immediately called her son who confirmed the water was rushing in again. They turned around immediately and by the time they arrived home, three and a half hours later, the flooding had stopped and the water had already begun to slowly dissipate from the basement.

“It was the exact same flood all three times,” Blakely says. “I think that was what was surprising to us.”

“When we got flooded in 2013 they said, ‘oh, the 100 year flood.’ So you fix up your house, you think you're good, and next thing you know it happens again. Then the third one was just, I think, almost too much for people to bear.”

Mississauga resident Linda Blakely and her husband Greg have been flooded three times.

(Submitted)

The storms put the City’s infrastructure to the test. It failed miserably. 

It was a nightmare version of déjà vu for residents who had been flooded a month earlier and a decade prior. The severity of the situation left many residents frustrated and those with flooded basements in a state of despair, staring down a bill for repairs that stretched into the thousands of dollars.

Prior to the 2013 rainfall, in August 2005, a storm dumped 130 millimeters of rain on Mississauga causing approximately $500 million in damages. Then in August 2009, the City received 120 millimeters of precipitation and another $500-million bill. Despite five once in a century storms in two decades and millions in taxpayers dollars spent to upgrade Mississauga’s stormwater infrastructure, it is clear the system has not adapted quick enough. 

The recurrence of such a disaster indicated that more robust measures were needed.

The City of Mississauga increased its stormwater funding and invested $53.5 million as part of its 2025 budget to help respond to future storms, substantially more than the $33.7 million in capital funding allocated in 2024. While the municipality has poured over $200 million into stormwater infrastructure since 2016 with plans to invest $365 million between now and 2034, it has been widely viewed that this is not nearly enough to respond to the scale of a change being triggered by the warming climate. 

The stormwater drainage system is one of the largest assets owned and operated by the municipality, with the 2024 Corporate Asset Management Plan estimating the City’s infrastructure to have a replacement value of $7.6 billion. The Pointer previously reported an additional $30 million per year from 2025 to 2124 is required to fully fund the City’s stormwater program and maintain Mississauga’s aging stormwater pipes, according to a 2020 staff analysis.

But Blakely feels progress has been “moving at a snail's pace.” To learn that no tangible work had been done since the 2013 flood is “what got people's anger boiling”. Witnessing first hand how similar the July and August floods were to the 2013 mega storm, residents were left frustrated by the lack of proactive measures taken by the City in those 11 years.

“We're in a flood zone, and until that creek gets fixed that's hugely problematic, in my opinion, for our community,” she says.

An aerial view of Mississauga resident Linda Blakely’s home in Applewood Acres, where she has resided for more than 30 years.

(Submitted)  

Finally recognizing the urgency, Mississauga city council passed a suite of policies in September to combat future floods, including a number of major stormwater projects that will now be expedited. Among them was the Dixie-Dundas Flood Mitigation Project which will now be completed six years earlier than initially planned and comes at a price between $8.3 million and $9.5 million, to be fully funded through the City’s Capital Plan. Staff say the changes will protect “more than 1,000 properties currently at risk of flooding due to the overflow of Little Etobicoke Creek.” 

While the timeline was condensed, Ward 3 Councillor Chris Fonseca, who represents one of the areas hardest hit by the flooding, said six years is still too long given the urgency and need for flood mitigation measures in the area. It will be critical, she added, to ensure staff are moving forward and that there are no barriers to keeping on the timeline to address future waterflow.

“We have to continue to invest in the stormwater infrastructure and the stormwater ponds and the various types of infrastructure that we have throughout the city,” she told The Pointer.

In an effort to alleviate the financial burden facing residents whose homes were left in a state of disrepair, the City introduced flood relief programs, including a Residential Compassionate Flood Relief Grant, to be funded through property taxes, that will offer a one-time payment of $1,000 to residential property owners who suffered basement flooding damages. The program is “based on compassionate grounds and is not considered an admission of liability on the part of the City of Mississauga.” A Basement Flooding Prevention Rebate Program, meant to be a preventative tool to support residents by alleviating some of the costs associated with basement flood prevention improvements, was also introduced.

But Craig and Karri have not been happy with the City’s response or lack of accountability. In a letter from the City dated August 6th and shared with The Pointer, the City wrote, “Due to the severity of the storm the City of Mississauga cannot be considered responsible for your resulting damages.” The letter added the rainfall “was well beyond the drainage capacity planning guidelines of any city or major municipality.”

“While this was an unfortunate and unpleasant event, we see no evidence of negligence on the part of the City of Mississauga.”

These relief programs, however, are peanuts in the grand scheme of the costs residents are facing. In Ontario, total insured damage from flooding this past summer exceeded $1 billion, marking it the second-costliest summer for floods in the province’s history. The flash flooding in July alone caused over $940 million in insured damage, according to estimates from the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

The Little Etobicoke Creek watershed is the primary source of the spillover that causes flooding in the Dixie-Dundas area.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer files) 

According to Craig, during a public information meeting after the flooding, they were told by a City staff person that they may have to consider what residents in Toronto have done, where homeowners have resorted to filling or sealing their basements in response to flooding concerns.

“So in other words, get rid of 800 square feet of your house and lose the value of your home,” Craig said. “That would take $253,000 off the value of my house.”

“I haven't recovered from that comment,” Karri said. Meanwhile, an environmental assessment released last June revealed the Little Etobicoke Creek watershed — which their backyard backs onto — has experienced flooding and erosion concerns dating back to the 1970s. It identified that flooding in this particular area is caused by “an undersized main channel and floodplain, undersized bridges and culverts, and large contributing upstream flows that have intensified through the effects of upstream urbanization.”

Because of its susceptibility to flooding, the area of Dixie Road and Dundas Street East were designated as Special Policy Areas (SPAs) by the province in the 1980s — a label that limits development within an area that was built around a flood plain. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority has also designated lands associated with the project area as flood vulnerable, with a high priority for mitigation. Yet, despite the longstanding classification, the City has not taken meaningful action to mitigate the problem. 

But local funding will not be enough to tackle the increasing frequency of extreme weather events. Climate projections from the Region of Peel highlight that the amount of precipitation is increasing, with more severe and consecutive rain events anticipated in the future. This increase in frequency is putting more pressure on municipalities to expand stormwater management capacity to reduce potential flooding. 

Mississauga’s own climate projections for 2050 are already showing severe weather events every six years as opposed to a previously anticipated 40 years, and 70 mm more in annual rainfall, according to the City’s Climate Change Action Plan.

A 2022 report from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario warned that climate change-induced extreme rainfall could cost municipalities an additional $700 million annually to maintain stormwater and wastewater systems. It highlighted the cost of maintaining this infrastructure could rise by up to $6.2 billion by 2030 due to the increasing frequency and severity of weather events across the province. It’s something the PC government under Premier Doug Ford has refused to address. Instead, the PCs have pushed a development that could lead to widespread urbanization in farmland and other sensitive areas that could potentially make flooding issues worse. 

Staff have repeatedly cautioned the City cannot bear the financial weight alone, while elected officials warn funding will be needed from other levels of government. Though the City has been actively applying for federal and provincial grants to support critical flood prevention and infrastructure initiatives, Mayor Carolyn Parrish previously said “we’ve been left to dry.” 

An application submitted to the Province at the end of 2024 to support the reconstruction of Little Etobicoke Creek as part of Mississauga’s Dixie-Dundas Flood Mitigation project was denied. The City has since submitted two applications under the federal government’s Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund requesting just over $24.2 million for the reconstruction of Little Etobicoke Creek.

While the long-term infrastructure plan is slated to be fully funded through the City’s stormwater charge, staff warned during budget deliberations in November that Mississauga’s stormwater reserves could be depleted by 2026 without additional revenue. Staff have instead suggested the possibility of raising the City’s stormwater charge in future years, adjusting contributions to other reserves or directing any funding for flood mitigation toward stormwater projects to offset costs.

Mississauga Councillor Chris Fonseca introduced a motion proposing the City establish a Stormwater Advisory Committee to address increased flooding concerns.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer files) 

To boost the City’s response, Fonseca introduced a motion in January to establish a Stormwater Advisory Committee, a move she said comes as a next step to the City’s Stormwater Master Plan, approved by council in June 2023. It outlines a framework of actions to guide stormwater management systems and infrastructure investments in the short and long term. The strategy laid out 22 actions with recommendations for managing stormwater. 

“I think that now to have the committee and to align the committee with the action items that are in the stormwater master plan, we're in a different place. I think there's more opportunity now,” she said. “It'll be a very action oriented committee that will be able to identify how we're going to successfully act on the items that are laid out in our master plan.”

“It's all about supporting the residents as much as possible, and also supporting businesses,” she said of the committee, which will help to educate the public and evaluate policies. Citizen appointments were made during a closed session meeting on May 14. City officials noted that members will be chosen based on qualifications or interest in the environment, sustainable development, climate change, conservation and property insurance. An inaugural meeting will take place June 17. 

In the meantime, residents are still dealing with the fallout of last year's storms. 

As of February — nearly six months later — Blakely was still working to finalize details with her insurance.

“And that's just a small part of it. We have a basement, 1,200 square feet, that is still cement floor and cement walls because we had to waterproof it in the fall, and now we're waiting for another big rainstorm to see how it holds up. People are afraid to finish their basements. They're afraid to do anything, and they're afraid they won't get insurance. For many people that's a huge concern.”

The cost to waterproof their basement, however, was not covered by insurance. Blakely said that while they initially opened a second claim for the August flood they ultimately decided to close it to avoid their insurance being negatively impacted.  

“But most of our neighbors had two claims, and now they're feeling the impact of it. They're not getting insurance, or it's costing them an arm and a leg, and the coverage on their insurance is going from 50k down to maybe 15k,” she says. “Not to mention the reduction in the value of the home. We know people that are trying to sell, that were trying to sell beforehand, and there’s just the loss of value of our properties because of this.”

After damage and reconstruction costs, Blakely says she is staring at $150,000 in repairs and other costs. 

“Who knows what people put in their basement? It could be very valuable. It might not be, but the reality is I lost all my mementos. It's often stuff that is meaningful. There's the usual furniture and stuff like that that can be replaced, but there's some stuff that just can't.”

“Perspectives certainly would vary based on your individual circumstances. And I think that's key. Some people were just crying because to have it happen once in a lifetime… three times you literally are at the end of your rope.”

At a time when vital public information is needed by everyone, The Pointer has taken down our paywall on all stories to ensure every resident of Brampton, Mississauga and Niagara has access to the facts. For those who are able, we encourage you to consider a subscription. This will help us report on important public interest issues the community needs to know about now more than ever. You can register for a 30-day free trial HERE. Thereafter, The Pointer will charge $10 a month and you can cancel any time right on the website. Thank you