Park West residents face months without power after Canada Day flood

When record rainfall hit Ottawa on July 1, 2026, more than 100 millimetres fell in a single day. Hundreds of households reported basement flooding, but residents at Park West — a building at 30 McEwen Ave. near Carlingwood Shopping Centre — faced a cascade of failures that left them displaced weeks into October.

Diane Welshman, who lives in the building, watched rain go sideways across her balcony that day, then looked down to see the lobby flooded above kneecaps. The water receded by the next morning, but the damage to the basement electrical systems proved catastrophic: the building's power system is located there, and flooding disabled it entirely.

Residents were evacuated Thursday morning after the loss of power cut off air conditioning and elevators. Katrina Mayer, a Park West resident, described the chaos: "I'm going to have to move out for a couple of weeks. I'm scared. It's scary, we're all scared. We don't know what to do. We're going to be displaced for how many weeks or days or whatever," she said.

Tenants' vehicles in surrounding parking lots were damaged as well, with flood waters rising as high as door handles in some spots. Margaryta Iermakova, another 30 McEwen resident, said her car can turn on but the engine won't start.

Property management company Saickley Enterprises says it responded "reasonably" and "expeditiously" to the flood, though the company did not respond to media requests. Bay Ward Councillor Theresa Kavanagh has been working with property managers to restore power, but said in a statement: "In terms of getting power back on and getting it restored, it will happen. We just don't have an exact timeline." As of October 13, basic amenities remain unavailable to residents.