Kemptville, Ont. residents battle flooded basements, power outages as storm clean-up continues

KEMPTVILLE, ONT. -

Clean-up is underway in Kemptville, Ont., south of Ottawa, where many residents were still in the dark and struggling to keep their basements dry Thursday afternoon.

In Kemptville's west end, power went out around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday as the freezing rainstorm moved through eastern Ontario.

That meant Lynn Van Der Linde's sump pump stopped running. She and her family were up all night trying to keep their basement from flooding.

"My teenage son, my husband and myself were just bailing buckets of water to try and avoid the flooding," Van Der Linde tells CTV News.

"And we were just about to give up and realize we were not winning the battle, and our friend came through with a generator."

Next door, Scott Paterson had the exact same story. By midday Thursday, Paterson had already burned through one generator and had to bring in a second.

"It was raining so heavily yesterday and then with the warm weather today the ground is wet, I mean it's really wet," Paterson said.

As of mid-afternoon Thursday, 3,000 of North Grenville's 18,000 residents were still without power.

North Grenville Mayor Nancy Peckford says hundreds of trees came down, with up to 40 road closures in effect across the region on Wednesday.

"It was an extreme and severe weather event and there was more flooding than we've seen in quite some time," Peckford said.

"It's been a long 24 hours for some folks in North Grenville."

Warming and charging stations have been set up at the arena in Kemptville and at Catered Affairs, a catering company in Kempville's south end.

"Many people have been in and out on a need to basis," said Natalie Castellas, owner of Catered Affairs.

Castellas says they were not anticipating having to open their doors for warm meals and free WiFi, but felt compelled seeing the aftermath of Wednesday's ice storm.

"We just kept hearing crunch, crunch, crunch and fire sirens going by," she says. "We're a very tight-knit community."

Gas stations in Kemptville were packed Thursday as one of the few places in town with power, and many people needing to fill gas canisters for generators.

"We're all getting different stories," said Van Der Linde on when she was expecting her power to come back on.

"We don't know if it's 4 o'clock today, 6 o'clock tonight, noon tomorrow."

Municipal and hydro crews have been working around the clock to clean up and get Kemptville back online.

"Hydro One is pretty busy right now," Peckford said. "So estimates of later [Thursday] should be met with some skepticism. I think they're managing and triaging."

"I think some of our residents will be waiting until the weekend unfortunately."