Good afternoon. It's an honour to speak with you today.
My name is Darcy Gray and I'm the chief of the Listuguj Mi'gmaq Government. I want to share that on behalf of Listuguj, our hearts are with our Mi'gmaq brothers and sisters and all those who have been affected by Hurricane Fiona.
In the spring of 2018, our community experienced significant flooding in several homes due to a perfect storm of events—heavy snowfall in the winter, rapidly warming temperatures and heavy rains. It was a Friday evening around the end of April when a few calls came in because of basements flooding. Help was sent. Then, as more calls kept coming in, it wasn't long before we realized we had to act on a much larger scale.
The next morning we established a command centre in our Natural Resources building, bringing in staff from public security, capital and infrastructure, communications, health and various other departments. A call centre was created. Our rangers and fire department were doing initial assessments and check-ins, delivering and setting up sump pumps when needed. The responses were swift and rather well coordinated with a touch of chaos.
I can remember at one point handing my personal credit card to one of our social workers to drive to Bathurst, New Brunswick, an hour away, to buy all the pumps they had because locally there was nothing else available. Staff from our health department ensured proper self-care for those responding and helped to flag which homes may have had special circumstances or additional risks because of health concerns. Larger pumps were brought in to move the water out of key areas and hopefully lower the risks of additional flooding. Community members volunteered and offered pumps or generators, whatever they could, to help. We did what we had to, coming together as we often do in times of crisis. We were also in contact with emergency management at ISC. The support was greatly appreciated. They helped us to find equipment and supplies. They provided guidance and support during the initial response and throughout the work that followed.
After the initial crisis response, assessments were done by a third party project management firm. Approximately 55 homes had been identified and assessed for repairs because of the flooding. The report outlined the scope of the repairs and approximate cost and indicated that basements would need to be gutted and cleaned, and that at a minimum such things as mould remediation, membranes and waterproofing were needed. In many cases the entire foundation needed to be lifted and rebuilt because of high groundwater levels. The instructions received at this time from emergency management were to get things moving and get things done as quickly as possible and to build back better. We hired teams to clean and clear out the basements that had flooded. We documented, tracked and supported to the best of our collective ability. We moved and we got things done.
After several months the project shifted within the ISC regional office from emergency management to infrastructure. The switch brought new criteria to determine which houses qualified for repair, now limited specifically to homes that flooded because of the increased groundwater levels that occurred in the spring of 2018. The new criteria reduced the number of qualifying homes to about 40; however, we had already cleared out most if not all the homes identified in the first assessment. We needed an answer for those 15 homes.
LMG Capital and Infrastructure worked with ISC infrastructure to find a solution, and ISC agreed to cover the cost of repairs but not of the cause of the flooding, thereby creating a problematic gap—the basements would flood again if we could not address the main cause. Our capital and infrastructure team found solutions to this gap and addressed the causes of flooding for the remaining homes as well. We completed the various phases of the remediation efforts in 2020, and none of the homes have flooded again, but we hold our breath every spring while we monitor closely.
These events and efforts placed tremendous stress on the staff intervening and on the families affected. Those who helped in the cleanup found themselves also supporting families who had lost irreplaceable items such as precious photo albums. Our health staff provided support to the families dealing with trauma while helping complete forms to replace items lost or access subsidies to offset the cost of being displaced from their home for weeks or months. We had dedicated staff in finance working with the support workers in health to track, monitor, record, report and process payments and meet reporting requirements while also trying to meet the expectations of those affected.
Our people felt the strain. Our staff felt the strain. Our organization felt the strain. Furthermore I must highlight the efforts of everyone involved, from those who first responded to those who helped rebuild and repair the homes and get families back home, and all those who collaborated and provided support along the way at ISC and LMG and everyone in between. Our response was not perfect, but overall we viewed it as a successful one. Since then we've continued to work with ISC to provide training on emergency management for staff and elected members of council. We've also recognized the importance of good communication and collaboration internally within LMG and with ISC, which helped tremendously during our pandemic response.
I should also note that assessing the root problems has led to many flood mitigation projects in the community to deal with the high groundwater levels.
I thank you for the opportunity to share this with you today.