Businesses across northeastern Ontario are facing mounting losses after fast-moving floods drenched several communities over the past week.

Much of the region remains under a flood warning, with Chapleau and Wawa under a flood watch. Officials are monitoring watersheds in Timmins and on the James Bay Coast.

For business owners, the damage has been swift and, in some cases, devastating.

Shane White, owner of Manchester’s Sleep Centre, Furniture and Spa in North Bay, said the water rose dramatically within hours last Tuesday.

“At 6:30 in the morning, the creek was OK. By 9:30, we saw it was coming a little bit,” he said. The water rose just over half a metre in the span of two hours inside his warehouse, White said, “then within another hour and a half after that, it just wouldn’t stop.”

White said staff rushed to move inventory out of the 10,000-square-foot warehouse, but they quickly realized they could not keep up.

“You’re trying just to save what you can, but it was just a lost cause,” he said.

While the retail store itself was spared, the warehouse sustained extensive damage forcing a major cleanup and restocking effort.

“The biggest thing is to clean it up, get the stuff out, order a new product,” White said. “It’s just a lot of work.”

That work also included filling and placing sandbags around the warehouse and his retail location. 

“It’s going to take a couple of days, if not weeks, to return back to normal operation,” he said. “That warehouse would definitely be two to three weeks before we can get it all done.”

He says support from suppliers and other local business owners has helped keep operations afloat.

“I had another friend that had an empty warehouse, and he’s lending us his empty warehouse just to put stuff in right now so we can still keep our business going,” he said. “So we’re very, very blessed.”

White has owned the business for over 28 years and said he never expected something like this to happen.

“You get exhausted because we were working around the clock trying to make sure things don’t get worse,” he said. Conditions in North Bay remain stable for now after flooding on Tuesday, but are being closely watched, said the city’s mayor.

On Manitoulin Island, Adam Smith, owner of Jake’s Home Centre in Mindemoya, described a similar situation.

“Tuesday morning, I came in around 6:30 or so, and it was up to my front door and starting to come in the front door of the store,” he said.

Despite efforts to hold back the water with sandbags conditions worsened throughout the day.

“By two o’clock, it was more than what we could handle. It just kept coming and kept rising,” Smith said, noting the water reached just under a metre by the end of the day. 

The flooding has forced the partial closure of the business during a critical period.

“It’s catastrophic. We’re a very seasonal business here,” Smith said. “To be coming off our slow season and then have a hit like this is pretty devastating.”

Smith said cleanup crews started remediation work and early estimates of the damage are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It’s our warehouse, our main store, our main storage facility.  And not to mention, the loss of business from not being able to be open,” he said. “We’re very limited as far as what we can do with only about half of our store we can access, and the other half of our showroom is soggy.”

He said it will take “weeks or months, even before we’re able to get everything looked after.”

Both owners say insurance is expected to cover some losses, but they are uncertain around deductibles and how the claims will be assessed.

In the meantime, community support has played a key role. Smith said volunteers quickly stepped in to help protect properties and move goods.

“They just dropped what they were doing on Tuesday and came to help sandbag, pump water and move product. It was pretty amazing,” he said.

With waterways under pressure, business owners say the situation remains uncertain.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Smith said.