High water forces couple from home, again
FORWARD TWP — Glade Run flooding is an unwelcome tradition for the Wright family.
Once again, heavy rains Tuesday forced the creek that cuts through their yard to spill over, forcing Charlotte and Tony Wright out of their house on Valencia Road.
“The water was rushing so hard that it sounded liked Niagara Falls,” Charlotte Wright said.
She and her husband spent Tuesday night at the Days Inn in Butler Township. It wasn't the first time they've had to find flood water refuge at a motel.
Through the 26 years they've lived in the house, the couple has been forced out numerous times. In 2018 alone, they had to evacuate twice.
The seemingly relentless downpour Tuesday caused them to hightail it out of there by 8:30 p.m.
“Once it came over the road, it was done,” Charlotte Wright said of the rising water. “We knew what to expect.”
Put another way: Been there, done that. They took one change of clothes before making their retreat.
“As fast as it was coming up,” she said of the water from the swollen creek, “it reminded me of (Hurricane) Ivan.”
The 2004 hurricane deluged parts of the county with up to six inches of rain in less than 24 hours. It caused tens of millions of dollars worth of damage to hundreds of homes and businesses.
The Wrights guessed there was a foot of water in the house overnight on Tuesday.The couple made their trek back to the home later that night, in part to rescue three vehicles left behind. It was too late.“There was water in all three vehicles,” Charlotte Wright said.Navigating around the flooded roads along the way made their trip more of a journey.“It took us an hour and a half,” Charlotte Wright said.She and her husband were back at the house around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. But they knew there was no way they were getting in.“The water's coming down,” Charlotte said, “but we can tell it's still all through the house, probably six inches. We won't know how bad it is until we can get in there.”It looked bad from a distance. The force of the water had apparently broken their garage door and forced open their home's front door.Later, when the waters receded enough, they got a closer look. It wasn't pretty.“We lost everything inside,” Charlotte Wright texted from the scene around noon.“This was worse than Ivan,” she said in another text.The one silver lining to the Wright's personal anguish was that the rest of their family was spared this time.The couple's 26-year-old daughter, Samantha Riccitelli, and Samantha's children, ages 5 and 3, moved out of the house in August 2018 and into a home in Evans City. They're living there with Samantha's fiancé.“I'm so happy they didn't have to go through this again,” Charlotte Wright said of her daughter and grandchildren.She's especially happy for the little ones.“They don't understand (about the flooding),” Charlotte Wright said. “They're not old enough to think, 'Oh God, it's going to flood again.' I don't want that going on in their little heads.”
She and her husband have been trying to move, but it's not so easy.They've been working to sell their property to the township as part of a program that helps municipalities acquire homes in hazardous flood areas.The process is slow going due to the bureaucratic red tape they are experiencing with forms to be filled out and forwarded to other governmental agencies — state and federal.Tony Wright had some choice words for one of those agencies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But he does his best to keep those words between himself and his wife.“I'm exhausted,” said Charlotte Wright of battling both the flooding and the governmental paperwork required to rescue themselves — permanently — from their home. “I'm just done.”
