When you park your car in the garage or a parkade you expect it to be safe and protected for the sun and rain. On Wednesday, January 2nd the Crown Corporation reported the outage approximately at 8:25 a.m., stretching from the University of Winnipeg to The Bay and beyond.
As per Manitoba Hydro, a major power outage downtown is due to the flooding of a downtown parkade. Several businesses on Portage Avenue and in the Graham Avenue area appear to be affected, some offices and stores a temporary closed due to a power outage and water in basements. Hydro originally estimated everything to be back up and running by noon, but now say they don’t know when the power will be back on.
This is not a first time a Parkade on Portage is flooded. But people who parked at Portage Parkade were really surprised when finding their vehicles in the water.
October 2nd approximately 11 a.m the flood started and the water level was going up every hour and rose as high as knee-deep on the Level P1. The Level P2 also got also affected. People, who rent parking spots monthly were called on their cell phones or emailed to come over and get their cars moved to avoid serious water damage.
As you can see in the photos, many cars are in the water to a level, that is can get inside the cabin and damage the carpet and other parts of the interior.
Later the information surfaced that a contractor was working in the area and private water service was damaged, that resulted in a discolored water flood. In addition, the residential building at 400 Webb Pl. was cut off the water, which resulted in a big “inconvenience”, if it can be called that way, for people residing there.