West Island seniors’ residence adapting after almost a month without elevator service due to flood

CHSLD Vigi in DDO has had to adapt over the last month, after its basement was flooded on Aug. 9 when heavy rain came down over much of the province.

Since then, the long-term care residence has had no elevator service because the systems were damaged in the flood, meaning staff, residents, and visitors have had to adjust.

“Since the flood, of course, I mean, everybody suffers. Staff and the patients, but life goes on,” explained Paul, visiting his wife who is a resident there.

“At first it was a little difficult, but now you get used to it,” he said. “I do my laundry at home, before I used to do it here.”

Paul’s wife has been a resident for three years.

“She’s in a wheelchair and I take her outside. Of course with no elevators right now, we can’t get to the garden. We have a balcony on the first floor and we can sit out there. Until the elevators are fixed and we get back in the garden,” said Paul.

A visitor, Mark, who did not wish to be on camera says his mother hasn’t really been inconvenienced.

“She had to go down for one appointment and walking slowly with me helping her, she could handle one floor. She couldn’t do it on her own, but with somebody helping her, it was okay,” he explained.

“Everyone flooded at the same time,” he added. “You have sloping down driveways, it can happen.”

Four feet of water accumulated where the residence and the administration had their servers, storage room, and more.

“We have all sorts of things that are here, usually, our archives are here too,” said Sylvie Cajelait, a spokesperson for CHSLD Vigi. “It was a big disaster in terms of water and in terms of what we lost. We lost knowledge, we lost power, we lost our servers. So it was very, very scary,” said

“The fact that we didn’t have our computers, our phones weren’t working, and we didn’t have the elevators. So we had a human conveyor belt where people were in the staircase, they were bringing food to the different floors so our residents could have their breakfast as usual. So really what was beautiful is how people came together as a community.”

Cajelait says staff have developed new routines to do laundry and meal service for the 160 residents over three floors. They’ve also added more leisure activities to each floor for those who are less mobile.

“We do everything we can so it doesn’t impact, but for sure the few who could go downstairs by themselves, they thought that August was a long month.”

Cajelait says they’ll have to replace all of the elevators and that can take up to eight months.

“While we’re ordering new elevators, we’ll repair at least two so that way the mobility between the different floors will be better,” said Cajelait.

She says they thought they would have the elevators working two weeks ago, but were missing the parts, meaning work was delayed. But it finally started this week.

“We think by the end of next week and the beginning of the week after, we’ll have a fully functional elevator,” said Cajelait.

Mark adding, “Elevators are technical things. You wait for parts. That’s the way it is. You just got to be patient. And they’re doing the best they can do with the situation.”

“We’ll get through this,” said Paul. “Once the elevators are fixed, then back to normal.”