“You just can’t imagine, unless it’s happened to you, the damage water does.” Premier Doug Ford spoke from the Muskoka hamlet of Minett on Friday about the devastation flooding has brought to the region.

“It just broke my heart,” he said. “You see the water coming into their basements; you see the sandbags around their cottages.”

Ford had a chance to meet with local officials who said they desperately need help from the province to mitigate future flood risks.

Canadian troops and volunteers have spent hours upon hours trying to salvage homes, sometimes in vain.

For NDP Leader Andrea Horwath who toured the flood zone in an army tank, it was an eye-opening experience. “We saw a house, or a cottage, that literally collapsed into the water just this morning,” she said. “That’s really something else to see.”

Muskoka Lakes Mayor Phil Harding says the outdated water management plan needs to be a priority for the province.

“A 2006 plan is probably using data from 1996 or 1986. Data that long ago certainly didn’t incorporate things like climate change,” Harding said.

Premier Ford announced he would assemble a task force to come up with ways to improve the water management plan. “We sit down, and we sit down right away and get things moving,” he said.

The local mayors left with a sense of optimism.

“I think it’s great to see, as we move out of the active event and more into the recovery phase, our thoughts are turning to how can we prevent this from happening,” Bracebridge Mayor Graydon Smith said.