Fairlawn Reacts to Record Rainfall, Schocalog Creek Flooding

Many Fairlawn residents woke up at about 2:30 a.m. by thunderstorms that blew through their neighborhoods leaving behind record-setting amounts of rainfall -- more than five inches in about two hours according to the National Weather Service.

The amount qualifies as a 1,000-year storm, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. 

"I have never heard rain like that," said John Welch, who has spent 41 years on Bancroft Road in Fairlawn with his wife Margie.

"We're flooded. You might call this one the mother of all floods," he said. "This is one of those events we've been having more and more often. So let's just keep ignoring global warming and see how far that gets us."

The Welches live along Schocalog Creek, which breached its banks leaving back yard furniture and toys submerged.

"Everyone is helpless right now," Margie Welch said. "It was different before we had all the development in Montrose; stormwater just flies over all those concrete parking lots.

"The city built a retention pond over by our house that helps with the surge," she said. Watching the flood waters race over the creek, she added, "but not that kind of surge."

Ellen Hesketh and her 13-year-old son, Aaron, have lived on Brunsdorph Drive for about eight years. Her son snapped photos of the creek from the bridge.

"I've never seen it like this," she said. "There have been helicopters all over the neighborhood this morning and crews have been out with the big pumps."

Bill Oroz stood in his flooded back yard Tuesday wishing he had put in the raised garden he was planning to install next to his garden shed.

"There's a good four feet of water out there," Oroz said, waving an arm past his ornate walkway and flower gardens filled with soggy orange daylilies, red bee balm and purple bud seedum. Oroz looks down, shrugs and give a short, exasperated laugh. "I put the brick walkway in here around the beds so I wouldn't get my feet wet."

Oroz said he's complained often that Schocalog needs to be dredged. "It may be a record, but the water has come over (the creek) many times. I've been here long enough to know what happens. Zip. Nada," Oroz said. "They city tells me it's up to the county, and the county says it's up to the city or the Army Corps of Engineers. It's like a three-ring circus."

Fairlawn Service Director John Sellars said the Fort Island area was the hardest hit in the city. Sellars got about a dozen calls and had crews out with pumps by 4:30 a.m. He said pumps were also used in neighborhoods bordered by Sand Run Road, Haverhill and Stratford. Neighbors on those streets have regularly complained to city council that drainage work done on Marquette in the past has flooded the basements of residents who live downhill.

"That's false," Sellars said. "I don't care what anybody says. When you are inundated with the amount of water we got last night in a short amount of time there's not a thing anyone can do."

Sellars said all streets were open and passable by noon.

The National Weather Service calls for more rain and possible thunderstorms tonight between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. with fog rolling in by 4 a.m.