Friday morning, Jeannine Oliver looked out her window and noticed that the Grand River was looking a little higher than normal for late June.

She didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. It was high, but not as high as it gets during the spring thaw.

Through the day, Oliver – whose house in West Montrose backs onto the river – kept following the flood bulletins issued by the Grand River Conservation Authority.

It wasn’t until 3 p.m. that she noticed a message warning that flooding was likely at the West Montrose trailer park.

“When we saw that, I think that was the first time that we were like ‘Mmm, maybe there’s a problem,’” she says.

Half an hour later, Oliver’s partner reported in. There was enough water covering their street that he couldn’t drive to their house. A firefighter had to take him partway.

Half an hour after that, Oliver got home and saw the situation for herself.

“I was running through ankle-deep water over to the house,” she says.

Once she got inside, she got to work. Bringing in friends and relatives for help, she and her partner were able to get most of their belongings moved to the second floor. Bags of topsoil, salt and sand were placed to act as barricades.

Despite those efforts, the home still suffered what Oliver estimates to be tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.

In hindsight, Oliver is wondering why she wasn’t warned about the potential for flooding any earlier.

“I think they were just as unprepared as we were,” she says.

“It wasn’t until the water was completely surrounding our house that there was really any notification that it was going to happen.”

The GRCA says it notified the trailer park that flooding was expected at 9:45 a.m. By 1:30 p.m., it was warning that flooding would likely be a problem in the village as well.

Acknowledging that there is something “kind of silly” about somebody who lives on a floodplain complaining about flooding, Oliver says earlier notification would have at least given her a chance to bring in extra sandbags and pumping equipment.

“Even if we knew by noon, we could have had help here,” she says.

With reporting by Max Wark