GASPE, Que. – The town of Gaspe, Que., was declared a flood zone Wednesday after two days of driving rain flooded basements, washed out roads and muddied tap water.
More than 250 people fled their homes on Tuesday evening in the community 900 kilometres northeast of Montreal.
As much as 230 mm of rain was expected to be dumped on the area by the end of the week.
A state of emergency has been declared in the town amid heavy rains and wind gusts that battered the entire Gaspe region.
Storm surges whipped up waves as high as 10 metres in the town of Chandler, to the south, where schools were closed as a precaution.
Some schools were being converted into shelters and others were closed when tap water became undrinkable. Remote villages were isolated when rivers overran roads.
A regional highway was shut down further to the south near New Richmond, across the bay from New Brunswick. Civil-security officials made the move amid fears that some bridges could be washed out by raging waters. One local businessman said it was the worst flooding that he had seen since the 1970s.
"There are several inches of water on the floor of the store," he told QMI Agency. "We haven’t seen this since 1978. Today things are even worse."
The weather system extended across the St. Lawrence River to the lower north shore region, where ferry service to the Gaspe was cancelled.
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