By Steve Hubrecht
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Raw sewage gushed into the downstairs of local couple Chris and Steve O’Shaughnessy’s home, filling their basement rapidly. It was Labour Day, just before the couple’s kids were set to head back to school. 

For their son Jasper, elementary school was an old hat: he was going into Grade 2. For their daughter Sloan, however, it was the first day of kindergarten. A pretty big deal by any measure. Even though it was a few days ahead of time, Chris had clothes ready for that first day of school, and backpacks and lunch kits set out, waiting to be filled. This, of course, is quite in character for the O’Shaughnessy’s. Anybody who knows the family will tell you: they are organized and they are punctual. Chris gets the kids to school each morning at least 15 or 20 minutes early. Steve always shows up for kids’ playdates — and for everything else — right on time, to the minute. They are a family that is prepared.

But nobody could be prepared for what was unfolding in their basement. Something was clearly terribly wrong with the municipal sewer lines, and the O’Shaughnessys’ downstairs was getting worse by the minute.

“We went down (to the basement) some time about 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m., and the sewage was already over our ankles. I don’t know when it started, but it was coming in really fast. Not dripping, but literally gushing,” said Chris, indicating with her hands that the sewage was jetting into their home in a two-foot-high stream. “The volume was crazy, just unbelievable.”

The pair didn’t waste a second. Chris frantically called the district of Invermere to let them know what was happening, begging them to turn off the pipes before their whole house was ruined. Steve gamely waded into the muck and began moving the family’s belongings off the floor and then right out of the basement. The O’Shaughnessys’ basement includes all three bedrooms in the house, a laundry room (filled with clothes and other belongings at the time), a storage room holding all their outdoor gear, and the room where Steve, an avid mountain biker and bikepacker, kept all his biking equipment and where he produces his bikepacking podcast. Steve salvaged what he could, as fast as he could, with the couple flinging their possessions out onto their lawn. 

The district eventually came and turned off the pipes, but Chris said that took awhile. “So we had raw sewage filling our house for more than an hour,” said Chris. “It’s pretty hard to describe how disgusting it was.” 

Cleaning the fetid lagoon of fecal matter in their basement was no easy task, and a special pump truck finally had to be called in, because normal pump trucks simply couldn’t handle the sheer volume of sewage in their house.

Despite their swift reaction, they lost a lot, including plenty of high-quality camping gear, bedroom furniture, and some of their kids’ treasured possessions. And, of course, their sewage-flooded basement sustained tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage.

Aside from the physical damage, the incident created a major upheaval for the family. In a matter of hours, their home had become uninhabitable. They were able to stay a few nights at a neighbour’s house, before their insurance company stepped in and paid for the family to rent a condo while their house was being cleaned. That, however, was a lengthy process, and the family had to live in the condo for months before they could move back into their home. The cleanup also meant heavy machinery treading over their front lawn as well as dumpsters being set up on it, which tore the yard up.

“Being displaced like that, even in good circumstances, is not easy on anybody, and these weren’t the exactly ideal circumstance, with the COVID-19 pandemic going on, and with the kids starting school,” said Chris. “It’s stressful, and it really is a gross feeling to have your home filled with sewage like that. You feel almost violated in a way, although maybe violated is not quite the right word. It plays with your mind a bit. You can’t help thinking about it, even still, and part of me can’t help worrying about the next time. Even our kids talk about ‘the next time it floods’.”

It wasn’t the first time the O’Shaughnessys’ home, which sits at the bottom of a bowl-like slope in the Wilder subdivision, had been flooded by sewage. A few months beforehand, the exact same thing had happened, although the amount of sewage that came in the first time was far less, it didn’t pour in as rapidly, and it receded of its own accord, after a bit. Still, that incident meant the family had to completely re-do their basement with brand new carpets and brand new flooring. That renovation lasted all of seven or eight months before the second, larger flood hit.

Nor are the O’Shaughnessys the only ones on their street that have been flooded by the municipal sewer system: at least two of their neighbours have had issues, though none as dramatic as the O’Shaughnessys.

After the second flood, the O’Shaughnessys put in a backflow preventer, a device that ensures their home won’t flood if the sewer system on their street fails a third time. 

Installing a backflow preventer, depending on where exactly it needs to go in, and whether connecting sewer pipes run under a lawn or a driveway, can cost as much as $10,000, although the O’Shaughnessys were lucky in that the location of their connector pipe runs under their lawn rather than their driveway and lucky in that Steve was able to do much of the labour himself, with the result that they ended up spending only $1,000 putting the device in.

The O’Shaughnessys’ insurance company was fantastic, stepping in to help and going above and beyond the call of duty to help the family through the situation, said Chris, adding unfortunately their experience with the district of Invermere municipal office wasn’t quite the same.

“With all the issues we’ve had on our street, I feel like we’re sitting on a time bomb here, with the sewer system, but the district, whenever I’ve interacted with them, they’ve basically just shrugged their shoulders and said ‘well, that’s too bad: we checked the sewer system twice this year and didn’t see anything wrong, so we’ve done our due diligence’,” said Chris. “We needed to get a statement of property damage (for insurance purposes), but the district was not forthcoming with that. We only got it because I kept going in to ask.”

When the family’s utility bill came due in October, Chris went in to the office to pay in person and asked if the district could help pay some of the cost of the backflow preventer, and asked if there could be a discount on the utility bill based on the number of days the O’Shaughnessys had been unable to live in the house.

“It seemed reasonable — we weren’t asking them for thousands in compensation, we were asking if they could pay us a bit for the backflow preventer, which we had to get to protect ourselves from their failing sewer system,” said Chris. “Or, since they filled our house with sewage, it would be fair if they only charged us utility tax based on the days we were able to be in the house using the utilities…Of course, I got a big fat no. But they did offer to charge us for the cost of turning off the utilities.”

Chris said she understands why — liability purposes — the municipality seemed to do its best to distance itself from the situation, but pointed out that that doesn’t mean it can’t at least show some compassion for citizens. “I get a bit upset at the total indifference…it rubbed us the wrong way,” she said. 

Chris is keen to raise awareness about this issue, pointing out that although backflow preventers are now mandatory on newly built houses, most homes in Invermere are older than these requirements, and that given the older infrastructure in some parts of town — (the Wilder subdivision quite apparently, but Chris has also heard of problem areas along 13th Avenue as well) — many other Invermere residents are potentially vulnerable to sewage flooding. 

“This is a problem, clearly on our street, but possibly in other parts of town. It could happen to anyone. Hopefully, if enough people are aware, there doesn’t have to be crap jetting into somebody else’s home,” she said. “I don’t want this happening to anybody else.” 

Invermere planner Rory Hromadnik noted that “most of the infrastructure in the Wilder subdivision is 1970s era” and said that the engineering expectation for it is likely a minimum of 50 years, but that even before reaching the minimum lifespan, it is possible to have issues with underground infrastructure such as sewer pipes.

“Things change underground. Sediment can shift, gravity takes a toll, if the pipes are clay tile pipes, they can get moist, which creates problems. Roots can get in, too,” he said, adding there are some parts of town that are worse than others.

“It’s super unfortunate to be flooded that way twice,” Hromadnik said in reference to the O’Shaughnessy’s case, which he did not know of in detail when the Pioneer contacted him. “It sounds like there may be some type of issues there. Just one time, that could be an isolated incident, but if there’s continued problems, that’s an indicator that there could be bigger issues.”

Invermere mayor Al Miller explained to the Pioneer that the Labour Day sewage flood at the O’Shaughnessys was the result of a sewer pipe blockage, saying that after the family called the district “that is when they (district staff) found some clothing and other items jammed up in the sewer system. There were rags, as well, and other things that should never be flushed down into the sewer system, but that somehow had gotten in there. They actually had to get a contractor to get it out.”

Miller noted that “our regular maintenance schedule was followed, and the pipes were checked as per protocol, so it’s a bit of an interesting situation,” adding that “obviously having the sewer system back up into your house is very problematic, and shouldn’t have happened.”

He said that from what he gleaned from district staff, they were only aware of the Labour Day flood incident and did not know of the earlier flood at the O’Shaughnessys or of any incidents at their neighbours’ homes. “We do want to fix any problems that there are, if people let us know, we will do our best to fix them. But if people aren’t reporting the incidents, and we don’t know about them, we can’t fix them,’ said Miller. “Our team is usually good at getting out as fast as possible. They move very quickly.”