FAMILY IN THE DUMPS AFTER ‘DREAM’ HOME FALLS INTO RIVER

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

BRACEBRIDGE — A week after photos went viral showing their place toppled over into the Muskoka River, Dave and Sue Coon are on the bubble after experiencing the agony and relative ecstasy of the devastating flood event that almost sank their elderly tenants.

“It was so heartbreaking,” said Sue Coon.

Just two days before a flooded birch tree gave way — the roots lifting the 900-square-foot guest house off its sonic tubes and tipping it into the river — the Coons urged the couple to move into town to their daughter’s home.

The Coons were “worried” the seniors may not be “comfortable” travelling Beaumont Drive if it became flooded — a premonition based on 2103 that proved true.

The Beaumont Farm area of town was one of the hardest hit areas of town.

So, when the home toppled into the river early on April 30, they knew that had made the right decision.

“I couldn’t live with myself if there were deaths,” Dave Coon told MuskokaTODAY.com Monday.

“We’re very, very fortunate,” said Sue, who said the first few days she couldn’t even talk to people.

“I was weepy and emotional. It was so heartbreaking,” she said about losing her mom’s summer retirement “dream home,” which the Coons built for her dad and mom, who died in 2014 and 2016, respectively.

“It’s like losing them all over, again,” she said with emotion in her voice.

“It’s been three or four days of absolute breakdown and crying.”

The Coons had been inside the waterfront property the day before losing it, and while the river levels were rising, it was fine, Dave said.

But about 6 a.m. last Tuesday they got a call from neighbour saying the guest house was in the river.

“I looked out the window and said ‘Oh, my God!’

“I just screamed at the top of my lungs,” said Sue, whose home is located on the river right beside the guesthouse.

“It’s a disaster.”

And there it hangs.

“I have no idea what’s holding it up,” Sue said.

“It’s (definitely) not safe to enter,” says Dave.

He says town officials came out right away and considered taking it down. They didn’t want it falling totally into the water and floating down the river.

But after army corps engineers came in — and they had “seven meetings” with the town — they determined it wouldn’t twist and fall apart.

But they recommended the birch tree come down, which a couple of neighbours were safely able to do the next day.

He says the guest house was built about 20 years ago using sono tubes and piers as part of its foundation, after the Coons moved into their home next door about 1980.

He says the spot they built – “to keep an eye” on his in-laws – was built with all the necessary permits from the town, who he said obviously knew it was on a flood plain.

But now, says Dave, “it has to be torn down and put in the garbage,” because it can’t be saved.

He says he’s “sitting on a $400,000 bill” taking it down and rebuilding the two-bedroom home.

The former Metro Toronto and OPP accident reconstruction specialist says he can’t really blame climate change for his predicament.

And he says the government is only inheriting the problems caused by the previous government, who he says has mismanaged the Muskoka River and lakes water system.

He says “Doug Ford was handed this mess.”

He wonders about rumours that the MNRF didn’t open a damn in Bala to allow water to drain into the Moon River, rather than backing up into Muskoka Lake and the river.

He believes unproven talk among some locals that the new Swift River power plant nearing completion in Bala played a role in restricting the water flow by it for construction purposes.

The MNRF now admits it has opened some new control damns as recently as late last week — weeks after saying officially that it had done all it could in the weeks and months leading up to the catastrophic events of late April and now May.

And as for the future and how long it’s gong to take to clean up?

“We have a long way to go,” says Sue. “I have no clue, I can’t estimate.”

Right now, their lives are in the hands of the province, in terms of the government’s announced financial assistance programs.

And the insurance people, who paid a visit and all but washed their hands of any liability, saying the Coons built on a flood plain and there’s nothing they can do.

But Dave isn’t taking no for an answer.

“They’ve poked a bad bear. I’ve pretty well had enough.”