CLEVELAND — Dozens of Cleveland West Side homeowners vented their frustrations on social media about flooding damage and infrastructure concerns after heavy thunderstorms hammered Northeast Ohio on Aug. 23.
West Park neighborhood homeowner Deana Hallman told News 5 that some of her neighbors have been flooded out three times just this summer and said basement flooding cost her hundreds in clean-up costs and the loss of priceless heirlooms.
“I cried, I just sat at the bottom of the steps, and I cried; that’s because that’s all I could do,” Hallman said. “And family items, things that my husband, my family, my children have kept all these years, 30 plus years and now they’re just ruined.”
Hallman also pointed out a potential safety issue after flash flooding of all key west side Cleveland under-passes in the area of Brookpark Road, West 130 and West 150 Street, blocked off traffic to an entire neighborhood for hours.
"They were filled with four feet of water, West 150 was filled with four feet of water; there’s no way to get through," Hallman said. "I mean, what if there was an emergency and emergency vehicles needed to get through? They couldn’t do that; it was completely blocked off by police.”
Ward 16 Cleveland Councilman Brian Kazy agreed chronic flooding on Cleveland's far west side is a growing problem, a possible safety risk, and needs a comprehensive long-term plan.
“We need to work with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, work with water pollution control, the city and the county to come up with a plan to stop all this flooding from happening," Kazy said. “It’s a major safety issue. If something was to happen down there, we needed to get police, fire, EMS down there; they wouldn’t have been able to get to that portion of the neighborhood last night.”
Kazy said a long-term flood plan will be discussed at the next Cleveland Utilities Committee meeting and should also involve the federal government since some of the flooded under-passes are railroad bridges.
“It’s definitely something that we’re going to have to look at bringing the feds in for this because two of the three underpasses are railroad, one is ODOT," Kazy said. “We just got to come up with something, and we’ve got to do it quickly; this has just become too often a problem."
"I was out last night until after 2 a.m., and I saw the look in people’s eyes who couldn’t get home and trying to get out, and it was scary.”
News 5 is committed to following through on this developing story.
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