Businesses in Warren, Youngstown, begin adding up damage

One Warren bank reported a money vault was under 5 feet of water.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
WARREN -- George Schuler never expected to take a boat to work at his Pine Avenue business, but this week he had no choice.
The owner and president of Superior Walls of Ohio in Warren bought a rowboat Wednesday to paddle his way through flooded streets to his company's parking lot where water was several feet deep in spots.
"It was an adventure," he said good-naturedly. "I got a kick out of seeing the Red Cross workers rowing by my office in canoes."
Most of his 70 employees got two days off because the high water forced him to temporarily stop production and deliveries. The high water stopped a few feet from Schuler's office building, so the basement foundation company's damages will likely be contained to the 40 tractor-trailers that sat in deep water for many hours.
Other business owners in Youngstown and Warren weren't so lucky.
Many were still drying out Thursday and had yet to assess the damage caused by heavy rains that overflowed storm sewers and flooded the Mahoning River's banks.
Bank flooded
Workers were pumping out the waterlogged basement of the 10-story Second National Bank headquarters on Main Avenue S.W. in downtown Warren where a money vault was under 5 feet of water Wednesday. The bank's power panels, heating and cooling units and boilers, its purchasing department, mail room and employee lunchroom were also flooded.
Pat Was, vice president and facilities manager, said the vault contained cash and coins but nothing irreplaceable -- another bank vault containing customers' safety deposit boxes is on a higher floor.
Second National's main office sits on the bank of the Mahoning River, and a retaining wall behind the building is usually enough to guard against flooding when the water level gets high. Was said he knows of only one other time that the building was flooded, and that was in 1959 when he was still in high school.
Officials don't have a damage estimate for the bank yet, but Was said the losses will be covered by insurance.
In Youngstown
Employees at City Concrete on Old Division Street in Youngstown are accustomed to flooding, said John Annichenni, president. There is no storm sewer line nearby for the company to tap into and the property abuts the river, he said, so heavy rains often cause problems.
Still, Annichenni said this week's flooding was the worst he's seen, and it came at a busy time, with the company supplying concrete for the 711 Highway Connector project.
City Concrete's building was flooded, water in some parts of the property was a foot-and-a-half deep at times, and workers had to wear high rubber boots to get to their trucks. Still, Annichenni said damages were minimal because experience has taught workers to keep the floors clear.
Elsewhere in Warren
At Union Auto Parts at Main Avenue Southwest in Warren, the water problems started Monday with a sewer backup that flooded the basement, said owner Bruce Saddle. By Tuesday evening the store itself and parts of a machine shop behind it were under more than 3 feet of water.
Employees tried to move store inventory to higher shelves to guard against flood damage, but they never anticipated how high the waters would rise. Saddle said he planned to open the Warren store on a limited basis today and he had estimators coming in to give him an idea of the damage costs.
A corporate-owned U-Haul equipment rental shop near Union Auto on Main Avenue Southwest was also under deep water this week, and its offices were still closed Thursday. An employee who answered the phone at a U-Haul office on Mahoning Avenue, Youngstown, said the Warren rental accounts and phone calls were being transferred to other offices.
WCI Steel spokesman Tim Roberts said he was amazed at how quickly the water receded around the steel company's main office and commercial buildings on Pine Avenue.
The parking lots of both buildings were flooded Wednesday, and workers were forced to stay home or find an alternative work station in the mill's production area. By Thursday morning, however, the 200 employees who work in those two buildings were back on the job and most operations were back to normal.
Steel production was not affected, but shipping was slowed because two of the plant's three entrances were inaccessible because of flooding.