Less than 30 min­utes of heavy rain in Williamsville wreaked hav­oc on Kent Street res­i­dents yes­ter­day, as flood­wa­ters gushed in­to their homes.

Res­i­dents were seen bail­ing and sweep­ing wa­ter, as well as slush, from their prop­er­ties. One home­own­er, Ra­jin Samkaran, said, “Twen­ty-four, twen­ty-five min­utes of rain, and that was it, flood. My kitchen, liv­ing room, my bed­room, my whole yard. My dog even had to climb on top of the roof.”

Com­plain­ing that this was the third time he had been flood­ed this year, he lament­ed, “Every time we get a good show­er of rain, it floods.” Samkaran ex­plained that most of the wa­ter from the area flows in­to the drains on their street, which can­not han­dle the vol­ume. “I don’t think they can do any­thing about this again,” he said.

Giv­en the fre­quent flood­ing over the years, he said he had bro­ken holes in the walls of his home and yard to let the wa­ter drain out. “If I don’t do that, then I have to take a buck­et or pump to get out the wa­ter. It’s frus­trat­ing, but what we have to do, we have to live,” he added.

Ben Lomond/Hard­bar­gain/Williamsville coun­cil­lor Vin­cent Raghoo said that apart from Kent Street, oth­er ar­eas were al­so af­fect­ed by the heavy down­pour. Ad­dress­ing the Kent Street flood­ing, he ex­plained that the street lies in a val­ley and, due to the ge­og­ra­phy of the area and the vol­ume of wa­ter that pass­es through it, the area is prone to flood­ing.

He not­ed that the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion reg­u­lar­ly main­tains and cleans the drains and that the bridge had been re­con­struct­ed, widened, and el­e­vat­ed.