Businesses slowly recovering from Nova Scotia flood

Rebecca Cripps has never been so grateful that customers have to climb a couple of stairs to get into her business.

The owner of both the Bedford and Dartmouth locations of Cobs Bread was back in business on Monday morning at the Bedford Place Mall after serious flooding last week. Much of the mall is still not open.

“Overall, we ended up being a lot luckier than others,” Cripps said in an interview on Monday. “If you come to the front of our bakery, you’ll notice that we have a couple of steps going up, where the majority of mall tenants don’t have those steps, and those steps really protected the front of the store, so we didn’t have any water come in through the front. We had a little come through the drains, but I’d say it was an inch and a half or two inches.”

And while the interior of the mall was wet, Cripps also benefited from the fact there’s another business behind her.

“Our unit is actually sealed off,” she said. “With us not having that mall access, we didn’t have any water come in through the back.”

However, Cripps had to throw out thousands of dollars worth of inventory, and still hasn’t heard whether insurance will cover her losses.

“We weren’t allowed into the mall until this last Tuesday, when we could go in and assess the damages, begin the cleanup,” she said. “The mall was without power so we had to rent generators, to be able to start sucking up the water that did come in. We had to throw away everything in our refrigerators, as well as our freezer, so that was a bit of a job to get all that done and we had to wait for power to be restored before we could reopen. As of now, we are open but we are a cash only business, just because there’s no internet in the mall yet.”

Windsor aftermath

In Windsor, the industrial building on the Hants County Exhibition grounds shows has a high water mark a foot off the ground.

Barb Rockwell, facilities manager for the Windsor Agricultural Society, said flood waters poured down the hill across the road where there’s a grocery store and parking lot.

“It came down behind the Ultramar and it all met down there and came in our driveway,” Rockwell said. “It was incredible. My son walked over from the Ultramar and the water was up to his hips. It just about took him off his feet.”

The agricultural society has purchased two industrial pressure washers, hired more staff to tackle the cleanup, and is getting volunteer labour from board members.

“I’m ordering loads of crusher dust to go in the barn, which was completely flooded…so we’re now left with holes where the water has run back out again, plus once the water subsided everything is covered with lovely orange Avon River mud,” said Rockwell. “When it was wet it just like walking on grease, it was so slippery, and when we let it dry, it was like cement.”

Flood waters destroyed a caretaker’s apartment, as well as a propane water heater for the outdoor showers used by campers. At the adjacent campground, 16 campers were evacuated, numerous trailers flooded and three cars written off.

“And our insurance deductible is $25,000, so we’re eating it, we’re not doing an insurance claim,” said Rockwell, asked if they can be ready for the exhibition in seven weeks. “Yes, we’ll do it but it’s not really an accurate deadline because I have a group coming in on the 11th for a horse show, and another group coming in on the 18th for a horse show and another on the 25th.”

‘We got ‘er all under control’

In Waverley, Doug Clarke was focusing on the positive on Monday.

“You wouldn’t even known anything happened now,” said the owner of Doug Clarke Autobody, who has five employees and seven bays. “We’ve got ‘er all under control, we got a new pump in, a new furnace coming tomorrow, all the bays scrubbed out, floors sanitized.”

Clarke said the last flood that affected his business was in 2001, but that was slow and gradual, not like last week.

“It just happened so fast,” he said. “We got the customers’ cars out just in time, by 8:30 Saturday morning we had a foot and a half of water, by the next day it was three feet. At least it wasn’t my house, that’s up good and high.”