Flood Fallout
When water from Sullivan Run built up and flooded part of the 500 block of West Brady Street on Wednesday evening following torrential rainstorms, it was only the second-worst deluge the neighborhood's residents experienced this year.
Tammy Sexton, who has lived on the street for 16 years, said flooding on the street is nothing new, but it can still cause devastating damage to residents.
“Last time, we had five feet of water coming up our stairs,” she said. “We're sick of it happening.”The National Weather Service Pittsburgh Twitter account issued its first flash flood warning of the day around 5:15 p.m. Wednesday for areas such as Mars, Evans City, Zelienople and Connoquenessing.It would issue several more throughout the evening that would overall encompass almost all of Butler County, as a storm dumped water for a few hours.
Dave Holmes, another resident of West Brady Street, was also frustrated by the flooding.“A few years ago this happened; it took days to get cleaned up,” he said.The water that pooled around waist level on the street turned into a water park for the children who live on West Brady, and they spent the evening splashing, swimming and even kayaking in the water.
Butler public works crews helped clean the street around 7:45 p.m.By 5:18 p.m., the National Weather Service account reported that two inches of rain had flooded the Mars area when a storm rolled in from the west.West Penn Power reported that 4,339 customers were experiencing power outages throughout Butler County in the early evening, with a majority of 928 in Clay Township. Additionally, 655 customers lost power in Cranberry Township, 526 in Chicora, 493 in Adams Township and 445 in Butler. Rachel's Roadhouse had reportedly lost power as well.The company's website did not have an estimate for when power would be restored to many of the affected townships, but the earliest estimates for others was around 9 p.m.Central Electric Cooperative reported that 55 customers lost power around the same time.
Butler police and the Butler Bureau of Fire rerouted traffic on North Main Street onto North McKean Street, closing down the road from Belmont Road to Manor Lane when a tree fell down onto wires around 5:45 p.m.Betty Renwick has lived on West Brady Street since the 1960s. She said she has nowhere else to go at this point, so she found ways of avoiding flooding damage.“There is nothing down in my basement anymore,” she said. “This is the umpteenth time this happened; 50 years, 50 floods.”
