The Plante administration had to defend its handling of flooding caused by the remnants of the storm Debbyfacing strong criticism.
The mayor of Pierrefonds-Roxboro denounced the “inaction” of the mayor’s team on August 9, reporting that his fellow disaster victims were sent from one department to another and had to wait hours on the phone.
“311 told residents to call the borough, the borough called the Red Cross, the Red Cross called 311. It was a complete fiasco, it was a circus that the victims were facing,” Jim Beis lamented during the first city council meeting of the political year. “Where was the administration during this time? Nowhere.” Mr. Beis is a member of the official opposition.
“They didn’t have to empty basements […]but they had to be there,” he continued. “We had to deal with this alone, with the citizens who are suffering.”
Montreal’s mayor defended her administration’s actions during the crisis.
“I was in Montreal and we were coordinating teams who know what they’re doing. The firefighters emptied hundreds of basements. They were there, they were there for the boroughs,” said the mayor. “We’ve faced incredible floods in the past, this one was just as incredible.”
“Stop playing politics with the City of Montreal’s services: blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, firefighters and police officers who know their jobs very well,” she continued.
The mayor criticized the fact that Borough Mayor Jim Beis asks his questions in English. “I find that peculiar,” she said, prompting boos from the opposition benches. “I want to mention it, because it happens a lot on the other side of the chamber.” “We are capable in French too: French, English, Greek, Italian, we are capable in any language,” Beis replied.
Some 3,309 private buildings were flooded on August 9.