As Montreal flood risk looms, volunteers step up to lend a hand — again

As water levels rise around Montreal, contingents of workers and volunteers have already begun to protect riverfront property — and the city is issuing an open call for those who want to help out.

Gianna Dalentino, whose home in Pierrefonds is threatened by the rising waters of the Rivière des Prairies, watched a team of city workers led by Pierrefonds-Roxboro Mayor Jim Beis building a dike to hold back the water on Friday.

Right now, she said, things aren't looking as bad as they did in 2017 or 2019, but she worries the weekend forecast of warm weather will cause the river to rise even more.

It is stressful, she said, but she's reassured by the dike the workers and volunteers erected on her lawn.

"They are being careful now. This year isn't as bad," she said. "We're very prepared. The city prepared everything."

But Beis said the city was trying to get the upper hand on Mother Nature, mobilizing workers and teams of volunteers — many of whom lent a hand in previous floods — to protect vulnerable homes like Dalentino's.

"The water level is high," said Beis, standing in front of the dike that city workers had built. "It has touched some of the barriers that we've put in place so you can imagine that it's at a level that we don't normally see this time of year, but we've put everything in place proactively."

In 2017 and 2019, volunteers converged on the West Island, helping homeowners in Pierrefonds, Île-Bizard, Vaudreuil and other areas affected.

Many of those same volunteers, like Scott Binns, who is part of the West Island Flood Volunteers Facebook group, are ready to help out again.

But, Binns said, they haven't "seen the bat signal go up yet."

Still, he and the other volunteers are poised to support their neighbours, offering to do everything from unloading sandbags from pallets, filling them, transporting them to cooking meals for those affected by the flooding.

"It happens fast and that's, I think, the benefit of having a group like this," Binns said. "You've got the city that's doing what they can and then you've got 4,000 to 5,000 volunteers … and on a dime you put it on there [the Facebook group] that you need volunteers and people will start jumping in."

But Benoit Langevin, a city councillor and the man responsible for co-ordinating this year's flood volunteering effort, urged people who wanted to volunteer to contact him directly.

"Facebook is just creating more confusion. If we centralize information, if we make sure we have all information at one place it's easier to co-ordinate."

Instead, anyone who either needs the help of volunteers or who wants to lend a hand, should send him an email at benoit.langevin@montreal.ca.

So far, he said, 60 to 70 people have reached out and offered to help.

One of those volunteers, Eric Jacob, said he has visited dozens of homes that are at risk of flooding over the past three days.

The city offers sandbags to those homeowners, but many of them can't lay the sandbags alone.

"A lot of the people [who need help] are either seniors, or they're pregnant or just not able to lift said weight," Jacob said. "We're talking about 60-pound (27 kilogram) bags of sand."