Exceptional rainfall floods Vaasa hotel and libraries

Exceptional thunderstorms caused widespread water damage in Vaasa on Sunday, including flooding at the basement of the Original Sokos Hotel Royal and damage to local libraries, Yle reports.

The slow-moving storms remained over the same area for several hours, producing intense and prolonged rainfall across Ostrobothnia.

At the hotel in central Vaasa, water forced its way through the basement floor after the water level outside the building rose sharply. Mika Mikkola, property director at Osuuskauppa KPO, said pressurised water emerged onto the basement floor in the building’s older section, which also houses Yle News Ostrobothnia’s newsroom.

Hotel staff vacuumed water from the floors throughout the night between Sunday and Monday. Hotel operations returned to normal on Monday.

Hotel manager Max Hellqvist said water flowed into the basement across an area of several hundred square metres, reaching a depth of about two centimetres. The source of the water took some time to locate, but it appeared to have entered from beneath the building rather than from inside it.

The first priority was ensuring the safety of hotel guests. Nearby lifts were closed after the flooding was discovered. Hellqvist said the hotel had suffered limited damage and that staff had worked through the night to remove the water.

Stormwater system unable to carry all the water

Vaasa’s municipal engineering director, Jukka Talvi, described Sunday’s weather as exceptional. He said the stormwater system had operated as designed, but the volume of water had been too great for it to carry away completely.

According to Talvi, the system was not designed to handle rainfall occurring once every hundred years, but rather ordinary weather conditions. The city has inspected its most challenging locations and checked storm drains while assessing whether improvements are needed on a case-by-case basis.

Mikkola said the drainage pipes beneath the hotel were dry after the rain. He suggested that water may have travelled beneath them before emerging at floor level, and questioned whether the city’s stormwater network had become overloaded.

Libraries also suffered water damage

Vaasa Main Library sustained extensive water damage on its second floor after the roof leaked in several places. The Variska Library was forced to close because of water damage, with water also entering through the floors.

Talvi said the city did not yet know whether the damage at the libraries was caused by an overloaded stormwater system. The property owners will investigate how the water entered and how similar damage can be prevented.