A decade ago, Toronto was underwater. Here's what's changed since the 2013 flood

Flooded streets, destroyed basements and a GO Train stuck in so much water that passengers had to be ferried to dry ground in inflatable boats — 10 years after Toronto was pounded by a record-breaking storm, many can still remember where they were when it happened.

The storm on July 8, 2013 saw at least 300,000 Toronto residents hit with power outages and about 1,400 passengers stranded for hours on a train filled with water. It also highlighted the need for more investment to help prevent flooding.

A decade on, that's something the city says it continues to prioritize.

Craig Mitchell, acting associate director of engineering services with the Toronto Region Conservation Authority, says he was at the G. Ross Lord Dam that afternoon when 126 millimetres of rain fell in the span of 90 minutes. The downpour was more than the amount of precipitation Toronto would get in an average July.

"As you can imagine, that much water falling in an urban environment creates a lot of run-off and the associated problems with all of that," he said.

"That night we were in storage mode, and we were trying to store as much storm water as we could, trying to prevent downstream flooding."

Mitchell says the storm sparked new major investments from all three levels of government into maintaining the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority's flood infrastructure, including work being done in the Port Lands.

"We're re-establishing the natural mouth of the Don River. And the idea behind that is we'll create more capacity so that during these large events, more water can get to the lake without causing flooding," he explained, adding climate change is at the forefront of most conversations in the flood community.

"We are trying to build the systems bigger and larger to sort of anticipate for larger storm events in the future," he said.

Jennifer Drake, an associate professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Carlton University was working at the University of Toronto at the time.

"I remember going down to the Humber River during the rainstorm and seeing how much it was inundated," she said.

"It was what we call a channel mobilization event. You had rocks that were the size of cars that were part of bank hardening that had picked up and moved hundreds of metres," Drake said, adding multiple homes on her street also had flooded basements.

She says there is much more happening today to identify where those vulnerable areas are, which is the first step to coming up with solutions.

"It was really fascinating to live and see first-hand because it's the kind of event, as an engineer, we would teach about and learn how to design our infrastructure for," Drake said.