‘I just don’t know what’s going to happen here’: Ice damming on Catfish Creek causes concerns

As CTV London’s Gerry Dewan reports, it was a tense days for crews clearing ice from the mouth of Catfish Creek.

It’s been a tense day for residents in Port Bruce Wednesday, with ice jams causing flooding in the community.

Crews have been working on-and-off for more than a week, using a long-arm backhoe to clear ice from the mouth of Catfish Creek, where it spills into Lake Erie. But the ice floes just keep coming.

Al is a cottager who has found himself in unfamiliar territory, “We’ve been coming down here for a couple of years, but I just rented a cottage this winter and I just don’t know what’s going to happen here.”

Cheryl Duffett and her family have lived in Port Bruce for approximately 30 years, and she knows the warning signs, “The concern is that the lake is completely frozen. It looks like there’s open water out there, but there isn’t any for a really long way.”

Duffett had her home flood in April of 2022 - the last time the combination of heavy snowpack and ice cold conditions caused extensive flooding in the community, “We knew right away it was really bad. We were down here, just like we are today, watching. My husband said, ‘We [have to] go.’ We piled as much stuff as we could on top of other things, and took things upstairs. But, you know, it was a pretty devastating event.”

The mouth of the creek isn’t the only concern. There are twists and turns in Catfish Creek that cause ice damming.

That’s what happened Wednesday afternoon.

The ice dammed in the creek just south of Imperial Road. That caused a back up, resulting in a sudden release of ice and debris. That release happened around two in the afternoon. It quickly filled the mouth of the creek. That’s when the waters started to dramatically rise.

Mary Ellen Bendoraitis is a long-time Port Bruce resident, “The ice got really thick. It’s the polar vortex. Any time we have polar vortex it’s terrible because the ice gets really thick and then it’s really unpredictable what it does.”

By mid-afternoon, the water started to slowly pool on streets near the creek. Then it spilled over causing the closure of Curtis Street and the flooding of a nearby trailer park.

Jeff Spoor is the director of Fire Services and Emergency Management for Malahide Township. He was watching the water rise near the mouth of the creek, contemplating if an evacuation might be necessary, “We want to keep this water going here. And, if need be, we’ll start getting people to leave in the lower lying areas.”

Spoor said most Port Bruce residents have learned to be prepared for flooding. The community was on a flood watch for much of the day but that shifted to a flood warning around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.