The Kinsmen club of Harriston has set up a relief fund for victims of the June 23 flooding here.
The club has already hosted a fundraising event with musician and comedian Jimmy Keys performing at the Harriston Legion on July 21.
The club is also accepting donations through the Royal Bank in Harriston. Cheques can be made out to Harriston Kinsmen Flood Relief Fund and mailed to PO Box 599, Harriston, ON, N0G 1Z0. E-transfers can also be arranged.
Minto business and economic manager Belinda Wick Graham told council on July 18 that funds will be distributed through a “fair and unbiased process.”
CAO Bill White said provincial officials visited the town on June 30 to collect information for possible relief programs and “got a pretty good eyeful of what was going on.”
He noted the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority (MVCA) is planning a debriefing session to provide municipal officials and other organizations with information on the flood. White said public information sessions are also being planned, probably for the fall.
“People want to know why … and what’s being done. I think it will be important to have that dialogue in the fall.”
White said that through MVCA officials he learned some interesting details about the June 23 rainfall event.
“Until 4am that Friday morning, had the rain stopped, we would have been fine, we wouldn’t have noticed it. The flows were somewhere around what would be expected with a heavy rainstorm,” said White.
The flooding occurred, he said, because more than 90 millimetres of rain fell in some areas between 4 and 6am.
“If people are wondering kind of why it took form like that, it’s not that people weren’t on it and monitoring and stuff like that, it’s just that the heavens opened up at that time in an unprecedented amount,” White explained, noting rainfall levels were “in excess of the one in 100-year event.”
