Moncton flood victims demand answers from city

Moncton city officials were grilled at a tense public meeting on Wednesday night over the flooding that hit the city after the heavy rainfall brought on by tropical storm Danny.

The number of homesaffected by flooding on Aug. 29 and 30 has risen to 160 and many of those people packed into a public meeting to question city officials about what went wrong.

So far, the city is telling the flood victims that it's still too early to say what caused the flooding,which was most severe inMoncton's northwest corner.

The city's engineering department is still investigatingexactly what caused the flooding.

That response wasn't good enough for Eric Arsenault.

"You provided us a service and it malfunctioned and nobody has an answer," he said.

The city is using video cameras to look underground in the hard-hitHildegarde area, where Arsenault lives.

The investigationis expected totake another month.

Moncton Mayor George LeBlanc admits the city was slow out of the gate when reports of flooding started to come in, but vowed that is the last time the city will be caught with a poor response time in such a situation.

"We will establish a 24-7 emergency line, hotline, so that we'll try to make it easier to get in touch with us so that we can respond with you as quickly as possible," he said.

More meetings

LeBlanc said the first meeting is a only a start to the process of understanding how the heavy rain caused so much damage in the city.

The mayor said it will take more time and further discussions to get the situation sorted out.

Last week, Moncton put out a call for residents to report any flood damage they experienced during the late August storm.

At the time, LeBlanc said if more people reported any flooding damage it would make it easier on city officials to understand what caused the problem.

As well, the Department of Public Safety's Emergency Measures Organization is asking people who experienced some flooding to report their damage to Service New Brunswick.

Saint John also faced significant flooding in some areas after the tropical storm swept through the region in late August.