72 years ago , the night of October 15 to 16, 1954 Toronto was hit by its worst natural disaster:
Hurricane Hazel81 people lost their lives. Hundreds were injured and thousands were left homeless.
The record rainfall that the storm brought to Toronto--up to 225 millimetres--was unable to infiltrate the ground because the above-average rainfall in the preceding month had already filled the water table. One estimate of runoff was that 90 percent of the precipitation ran off the land directly into rivers raising the water level by 6 to 8 metres. Water coursed through creeks where they had never before existed, derailed trains and washed out roads tore houses from their foundations, picked up cars and mobile homes, and wrecked boats.
Content warning
There's a lot of sadness and also lot of heroism in
these accounts
Some people got lost in the flood some people got away allright
Jim Crawford was 23 and a police officer the night Hurricane Hazel hit Toronto,
"It's still quite vivid with me. It was quite some time after Hurricane Hazel–for many weeks, months, and even years after–I'd wake up in a cold sweat thinking about what could have happened
Him and a civilian grabbed a boat and started resue operations:
We went out into the river and to describe it, it was just unbelievable. The water was up now to the height of the telephone wires, there were people on roofs of houses, there was a lot of screaming and shouting."
Jones steered the boat and Crawford helped people from porches and second floor windows.
By daybreak they had saved 50 lives.
"By that time, I was soaked right through and had the shivers. I just couldn't stop shaking."
Raymore drive was a quiet residential street located parallel to the Humber River across from the community of Weston. The Humber River rose and flooded the lower portion of the street, removing 1200 feet [366 m] of the street and 14 homes, and killing 35 people.
It has never been rebuilt.
David Philips, a resident of Raymore Drive, described the efforts to save people on the river,
"The homes were literally lifted off their foundations and swept away. You could hear the people screaming. Many of them were standing on their roofs. In many cases the screaming just stopped; the homes just disintegrated, and that was the end of it," Philips said. (Kennedy, 1979; p. 108-109)
5 firemen were killed in the rescue attmpts
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The storm left scars that still remain in Toronto.
Many areas were never rebuilt.
It was forbidden to build on the floodplains. It's a system of parks , golf courses etc now.
Still there's always a developer who thinks of all that prime real estate.
Hasn't happened yet though. the memory is too strong.
Flood controls up and down the Humber River and its tributaries are in place and the Metropolitan
Toronto and Region Conservation Authority was formed