Two floods in four days
Upper East Side residents demand answers
BRIDGEPORT — The stories are similar: water rushing through basements like small streams, carrying clothes and furnishings, destroying furnaces and water heaters and leaving behind mold and stench.
But this so- called 100- year storm didn’t happen once; it happened twice in four days — June 30 and July 3 — flooding basements like Sonia Kirkland’s on Ohio Avenue and damaging the equipment of crews cleaning up from the first event.
“My damage is more than $ 30,000,” she said. “My insurance doesn’t cover it. My credit card is maxed. I lost my washing machine, my dryer, clothes, a bed — everything.”
She said inspectors were coming this week to determine how much mold damage there is.
“It stinks down there,” Kirkland said. “My floor is popping up.”
On Thursday night some 75 residents attended a community forum arranged by City Councilwoman Maria Pereira under a tent on the ballfield
of Thomas Hooker School. Residents were given facial masks and hand sanitizer and told to fill out COVID- 19 information forms for virus tracing should anyone become sick.
For nearly two hours they peppered city officials like Jon Urquidi, the city engineer, Lauren McBennett- Mappa, the city’s Water Pollution Control Authority director, Craig Nadrizny, acting director of public facilities, and Scott Appleby, the director of emergency operations, with questions as to why this happened.
No one knows — at least not yet.
“This is very strange,” Urquidi said. “Something changed in the course of the last months.”
The city engineer said he suspects there is a blockage somewhere — maybe a retaining wall fell into a stream, perhaps branches or a tree dropped into a brook or something is blocking the flow of water in a culvert, tributary or under a manhole.
“I’m on a fact- finding mission now,” Urquidi said. “I’ve looked at the bridge work the state is doing on Boston Avenue and any permits that have been issued for Remington Woods or the General Electric property.”
So far Urquidi hasn’t found anything suspicious but he said he has not been on private property like Remington Woods, which requires the owner’s permission.
“I hope to have an answer in a few weeks,” he said.
McBennett- Mappa said all the WPCA lines have been cleaned. She recommended residents make sure to clear the tops of catch basins where leaves, sticks and clippings accumulate on the grates.
In the meantime, Pereira is assembling photos and damage claims provided to her by residents like Kirkland, Barbara Verner whose two cars were totaled by water damage, the Knob Hill condominium whose a common hallway was filled with water — something the maintenance director said he hasn’t seen in his 41 years there — and Elena Arroyo, whose basement resembled a babbling brook.
Both Pereira and Kirkland said several residents are banding together to hire a lawyer
That’s what residents in Derby did following a heavy rainfall on Sept. 25, 2018 that sent roaring waves of water into their homes. Their suit against insurance companies, contractors and the city is pending in state Superior Court.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Pereira said of the flooding. “Some of these residents lived in their homes 20, 30, 40 years and never saw a drop of water in their basement. Then twice in a week they are flooded. Something’s going on. Something’s changed.”
Pereira said the flood damaged properties on most of the state- named streets — Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia avenues as well as Goddard Avenue and Asylum and Cogswell streets.
“When they were forecasting heavy rain again on ( July 10), residents were calling me crying,” she said. “I was telling them to go tell their neighbors, to get ready and take out whatever is left in their basements.”
Luckily for the already devastated residents, that storm at least did not bring the expected heavy downpour to Bridgeport.