The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Storm caused ‘substantial damage’
PORTLAND >> Town officials are continuing to assess the extent of the damage caused by the torrential rains that inundated portion of town on Aug. 11.
Up to 5 inches of rain fell in a two-hour period, causing “substantial damage” to any number of municipal buildings in area in and near Main Street as well as in the Chatham Court complex.
A retaining wall in High Street will need to be repaired after it gave way during the downpour, First Selectwoman Susan S. Bransfield said last week.
It is the second time in five years that a sudden downpour overwhelming the drainage system on Main Street and resulted in damage to the Portland Food Bank and the basements of the Buck Foreman building and the Brownstone Intermediate School. The torrent overwhelmed the hydraulic capacity of an aging state drainage system that runs along Main Street and down under the Arrigoni Bridge.
With the system overwhelmed and no place for the surging water to go, the run-off “back-watered,” overflowing drains and spilling over into the basement of the Senior Center, which houses the food bank, and the basement of police headquarters in the BuckForeman building.
Even as officials were contending with the damage caused by the Aug. 11 storm, there was a lesser but still intense storm on Aug. 20 that caused some additional damage, Bransfield said.
Bransfield was attending a meeting in the Senior Center when the Aug. 11 storm struck, she recalled. David Kuzminski, the town’s technology director, “came in and said anyone who is parked in back of the building had better move their cars,” Bransfield said.
Very quickly, water surged up in lower lot of the Senior Center, threatening to engulf cars that were parked there. As the water spilled over into the center’s basement, it affected the elevator in the building as well as lapping at the shelves of the food bank, Bransfield said.
The mulch in the nearby playscape, adjacent to police headquarters, became water-logged and had to be removed. A town crew power-washed the playscape before it could be reopened, Bransfield said.
There was water damage in an after-school carpentry wood shop at BIS as well as a maintenance office at the school, Bransfield said. Water even made its way into the administrative offices at the middle school, Bransfield said.
The HVAC system at Town Hall was struck by lightning during the Aug. 11 storm, Bransfield said. Repairs to that system are continuing, she said.
Lightning also struck Company No. 1 on Middlesex Avenue, temporarily forcing firefighters to relocate to Co. 2, Bransfield said.
In the wake of the 2011 storm, the town commissioned an engineering report on how to deal with future storms, Bransfield said. The issue is complex, involving as it does both the town and the state.
Bransfield said she has notified the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection about the drainage problem. Town officials acknowledge, however, addressing it will be both time consuming and extremely expensive to correct.
Adding to the problem, storms as such as those in 2011 and Aug. 11 are becoming both “more frequent and more severe,” the first selectwoman said.