Niles looks to FEMA for flood-damage help

March 4, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

NILES

The city is looking to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for financial help and other assistance for residents whose basements were flooded after the city’s sanitary sewers backed up during Monday’s heavy rainfall.

“I’ve had at least 37 complaints of flooding, and there are probably more,” said Mayor Ralph Infante, who also apologized at Wednesday’s city council meeting to residents about the flooding.

Tom Telego, director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management, said an e-mail address, flooding@nilesema.com, has been set up for residents to provide specifics about the flooding damage.

“We’ll take that information, forward it to the county and see whether FEMA will consider it for funding,” Telego said. He explained that all FEMA requests have to go through Trumbull County.

Some of the worst damage occurred on Washington Avenue, scene of previous sewer-backup incidents.

“My furnace is shot, my freezer, which was full, is shot and my hot-water tank won’t stay lit,” said Ron Markowitz, a flooded Washington Avenue homeowner. “We’ve had to use space heaters to stay warm.”

Last August, Markowitz and other Washington residents complained to council following a similar backup into their cellars after a storm dropped three inches of rain on the area.

“For 20 years, I never had a drop of water in the basement, but in the last six, it’s happened all the time and I want to know why,” Markowitz said.

After the August complaints, the sewer system was cleaned out, according to Councilman Ed Stredney, who said he does not know why the problem is continuing.