2013 Minden Ontario Flood Case Study

Floods
Focussing on the 2013 Minden, Ontario flood
A flood is a large amount of water that covers an area that is normally dry. Floods can occur almost anywhere, but they happen more often on floodplains and on places close to the ocean. The land that floods regularly is called a floodplain. It is called coastal flooding when a large storm or wave from the ocean causes flooding in the cities inland. Some floods take days to develop, while others take minutes to form these are called flash floods.
Floods can be a very dangerous natural disaster because a flood has the power to move cars, buildings, and cause massive damage to life and property. Even the small floods that are only 30 centimetres or so can do massive damage to houses and if the

water is moving quickly, it could wash away important things like pets.
Floods are created by many different ways: some floods are made by rivers and streams overflowing, too much rain, a dam or levee breaking, rapid ice or snowmelt, even a beaver dam could cause a flood. If towns are built on a floodplain, and if the river overflows, the town could be flooded.
To help stop some of the damage caused by floods, put weatherproof silicone around your ground doors and basement windows. If there is a flood warning, turn off all the electricity in your house and bring all of your valuables and important papers up to a higher level.
The government has other systems in place to help stop floods from happening or being so severe.

They have sewer systems in place to collect water. If there is a flood, the government can send out water gates. Water gates are triangular bags that hold water; they work because the weight of the water is on a long flap on the bottom of the bag. The weight on the flap holds the rest of the bag up so that it can hold the water.
Case study: the flooding that occurred in Minden Hills in the spring of 2013, flooded the downtown core. The picturesque cottage town has the Gull River flowing through it. The river overflowed in April because of many reasons: a couple of days of rain, the third largest amount in over a century, but it also happened because the frost in the ground stopped the water from going into the Earth, the lakes and rivers being full from the spring thaw, and the rapid

snowmelt.
Those are the reasons why the river overflowed, but why did the town get flooded too?

The downtown was flooded because it was built on a floodplain. Back when the town of Minden was founded, there were not any laws about building houses near rivers. The houses were so close to the water that there was massive loss of and damage to property. In Minden, there is a record of flooding; there were floods in 1913, 1928, 1943, 1950, and 1983. As of 1975, the government started the Flood Damage Reduction Program (FDRP), which is a program that finds areas that are vulnerable to flooding and they prohibit building on that part of the

floodplain.
In 1983 after a different flood, the township added their data to the FDRP where they were told to use a two zone system. A two zone system is a system with two parts. The first part is a flood way, it is the part of the floodplain that is closer to the source of water; it gets much heavier and deeper flooding. The flood fringe is an area which is the area on the outskirts of the floodplain and gets much less water and current than the flood way. Instead of using the two zone system, the township just stopped building on the flood way, so there was still risk for the homes and businesses to get flooded. They did this because they thought it would lower the price of homes in the area. In the future, the townships should not build on flood plains, and they should always listen to the professionals.
If the town founders had decided to not let the people build on the floodplain, there would not have been this damage. The flood of 2013 caused around 4 million dollars of property damage, and over 120 people have claimed property damage. There were many fundraisers and donations to help the people with the cost of the damage. This year there is a new provincial dam project starting that will re-build most of the dams in the community, and will make them higher and more advanced so they can hold more water. This will hopefully move water out and keep it out, to prevent a future floods.