Phones ringing non-stop for restoration companies after storm

It’s going to be a busy few weeks for disaster restoration companies in Regina after Tuesday night’s storm.

Parts of the city got between 40 and 60 millimetres of rain in about an hour, most of it falling in a short downpour.

There was flooding in some areas of the city, like the underpasses downtown, and in some residential areas.

Mike Payne, project manager with Restorex Disaster Restoration, said on Wednesday that the company had been getting calls nearly non-stop since the storm.

“We were basically on sites until 3 o’clock this morning dealing with floods and extractions and things like that, so it’s been basically, somewhat non-stop,” said Payne.

He said the company has had to bring in workers from other areas to help deal with the volume of calls from the storm.

The cases the company is taking deal mostly with flooding, according to Payne — water that came through window wells, through doorways, and up through sewer lines.

“The sheer volume of water that came down, it just overwhelmed a lot of the normal systems that the city would have there, and unfortunately where it ends up backing up is into your basement, or into your business, or into whatever it might be,” he said.

Payne said when they go into a job, they have to tear everything out that the water has touched because, if it has come in from outside, it’s considered grey water and not clean.

Payne said a residential job can run anywhere from a few thousand dollars to more than $10,000, while commercial jobs can get up to multiple tens of thousands of dollars.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Nathan Meyer