Crews monitoring road conditions near washout to make sure public is safe
Crews with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure are monitoring safety in a flood-damaged area of northwestern New Brunswick in case additional ground is at risk of washing away.
A Bailey bridge will be installed this week on Rue Saint-François at Edmundston, where washout damage is the most severe.
However, little could have been done to avoid the flash flooding that caused the washout and other damage during torrential rain last Thursday, a department official says.
"It's a flooding event that is much more intense than any pattern that we've seen in the past," Jordan Stephens, acting director of the emergency management branch of the Department of Transportation, said Tuesday.
Crews with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure are monitoring safety in a flood-damaged area of northwestern New Brunswick in case additional ground is at risk of washing away.
"So it's difficult to be proactive in that type of circumstance."
A fierce and sudden rainstorm Thursday afternoon caused flash flooding that put many Edmundston streets under water.
More than 100 homes were damaged during the storm, according to city officials. In the aftermath, Rue Saint-François suffered the most damage.
Stephens said Edmundston received about 70 mm of rain in about an hour, and it filled parts of a stream near Rue Saint-François.
The water level in the channel rose and carried logs, dead trees and other debris downstream, clogging a culvert under the street. Water could no longer flow beneath the road, so it built up until it overflowed and collapsed the embankment on the other side.
The department will set up a Bailey bridge there within the week, Stephens said, after initially saying it would be installed sometime Tuesday. Rue Saint-François will then be open to one lane of traffic, managed by temporary traffic lights.
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"It's hard to put a timeline into the full replacement, repair of the existing [culvert]," he said
"We first have to wait until the water recedes enough to be able to provide a full visual inspection as to what the existing culvert looks like. From there, we'll determine next steps."
An aerial view of the flooded area in Edmundston. (Submitted by Dan Bellefleur)
The culvert is old, Stephens said, so the tunnel is smaller than it would be if it was made today, which contributed to it being blocked by debris during the storm.
Anyone whose property was damaged in the storm can apply for disaster financial assistance from the province, Stephens said.
Stephens said more information about long-term changes or repairs related to flood damage will be available after the initial post-flood cleanup is done.
Jacques Doiron, director of fire services and co-ordinator of the Emergency Measures Organization for Edmundston, said the storm started at around 3 p.m. Thursday and they didn't receive their first weather alert until 4:30 p.m., after the majority of the rain had already fallen.
"Probably no system in the province can take that amount of water anyways in a short period of time," said Doiron.
He previously told Radio-Canada that without a warning, the city was unable to follow its emergency plan and to install pumps.
Jill Maepea, an Environment Canada meteorologist, said the thunderstorm was late to develop, and the weather agency could not pinpoint exactly where it would happen.
"We had indications that if thunderstorms did develop, they'd probably be very slow-moving, and they could dump a lot of rain," she said.
"It was almost kind of like a wait and see where these are going to develop."
The storm was impossible to track, she said, because often there's a cold front associated with a thunderstorm, but in this case there was not.
"The only thing we can do is, you know, provide a watch area, which was done. Then you kind of almost have to sit and wait and see," she said.
This article was originally written for CBC News.