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Flood damage is ‘a disaster,’ village mayor says
YOUNGSTOWN
Flooding due to recent heavy rains has likely inflicted some $500,000 in road and street damage in the village of Lowellville, its mayor told the Mahoning County commissioners.
“It’s a disaster as far as I’m concerned,” Mayor James Iudiciani Sr. said. McGill Street is closed due to water damage, he added.
The tiny Ohio village near the Pennsylvania border seeks emergency state funding for road and street repairs, the mayor said Wednesday.
Referring to the state’s Rainy Day Fund, a contingency fund for calamities, he said, “The rainy day has come.”
The village may be forced to borrow money to make flood-damage repairs, he said.
June 205 went down in the record books as the Mahoning Valley’s third-wettest June, with 9.02 inches of rain officially recorded by the National Weather Service at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna.
Some areas, including Poland, which is adjacent to Lowellville, unofficially recorded as much as 12 inches of rain last month.
Also speaking to the commissioners Wednesday were residents of the Canterbury Creek development in Poland Township, which recently experienced severe flooding.
Late last month, the development experienced midstreet flooding to a depth of 1 foot, complained Dana Balash, 21 WFMJ-TV sports director, who lives on Cobbler’s Run in the development, which has only one road entrance.
“It is a safety hazard,” he said. “No cars can get to those homes. No ambulances can get to those homes” under flood conditions, Balash added.
Residential electric boxes were three-quarters submerged during recent floods in the development, which has about 100 homes, he said.
“We are getting excess water from other areas of the township,” Balash said of the flooding problem that has plagued his development for about the past 10 years.
“My jaw dropped when I saw the devastation in that development,” Anthony Traficanti, chairman of the county commissioners, said of his recent visit to that residential community.
“It was like two separate rivers running through that development simultaneously,” he said.
“It was frightening,” he said, adding he fears someone may be electrocuted due to contact between electrical equipment and water.
Traficanti said the commissioners have asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to re-examine drainage in the area.
Jack Walters, another Cobbler’s Run resident, said his $360,000 house suffered $10,000 in flood damage in April and between $15,000 and $20,000 in damage last week.
“Imagine having three rivers about as wide as this room hit your house about 3 feet deep, and that’s what’s happening,” he told the commissioners, referring to their county courthouse basement meeting room.