Residents do flood cleanup
PETROLIA — On Thursday, residents and businesses were still cleaning up the mess left by the flash floods of Wednesday afternoon.
That was true for Petrolia, where water from a creek that flows through the town came out of its banks and flooded streets and then the basements of nearby homes and businesses.
“I had the fire company here all morning. Other than that, we survived it,” said Maria Ray, a manager at Alan’s Roadhouse.
The lounge and bar stands next to the creek; floodwaters went several feet above their normal levels, and the basement of the bar had 3 feet of water when Ray came into work Thursday morning.
The Petrolia Volunteer Fire Department pumped thousands of gallons of water from the basement in about three hours.
There was only one other time that Ray remembers Petrolia flooding the way it did this week: Back in 1980. Others said the same.
“This is a freak of nature,” Ray said. “This is supposed to be a once in a lifetime event. Well, it’s happened twice now.”
Down the street, at Boltz’s convenience store, the 24-hour shop closed for the fourth time in the last eight years because of the water that collected inside the business.
“The worst part of it was the cleanup,” said Cinda Six, who co-owns the shop with her husband, Harry Boltz.
She thumbed through photographs and videos on her cell phone of the flooding following Wednesday’s storm. Most roads were covered, and the creek had a particularly strong current. Some playground equipment had even floated down the street.
The basement at her nearby home flooded, too. But Six said no one was hurt, and that was the most important thing for her.
“We were very fortunate,” she said.
Other residents in Petrolia and also in Karns City declined to speak about their flood damages.
However, municipal officials in those communities this morning said there were no problems left by the flooding, other than some cleanup.
