Flood Recovery Slow, Painful for Norwalk

From the Toledo Blade:

NORWALK, Ohio - Marilyn Seiler said she doesn't know when she'll again be able to live in the house she bought just more than a year ago in this northern Ohio city.

After she was evacuated from her home Thursday because of the floodwater accompanying the storms that swept through the state, she's only returned to clean up the damage caused by 9 feet of water that climbed up to the floor joists in her basement at 51 East Elm St.

"It can't get no worse," she said, surveying her street littered with blankets, clothes, carpets, furniture, and other ruined possessions piled high at the curbs to be carted away.

Throughout the area, the storms that began Wednesday night and continued into Friday morning killed two people, produced several tornadoes, and knocked out power to thousands.

Norwalk, about halfway between Toledo and Cleveland in Huron County, was one of the areas hit the hardest. The city's reservoir overflowed the spillway into Norwalk Creek, causing flooding of up to 12 feet in low-lying areas.

"It was just way too much rain for all the streams to handle it," said Bill Ommert, director of the county's emergency management agency. "We got 6 inches in a three-hour period, and it just plain backed everything up."

He said the storms affected about 800 houses in the county, ranging from a few inches of wa-ter in basements to seven or eight homes that were destroyed.

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"We're trying to get into the recovery stage at this point," he said. "But we're in trouble if it rains because it might get us back where we were Thursday."

And rain is exactly what is predicted for Huron County throughout the next five days, according to officials at Accuweather in State College, Pa., and the Cleveland office of the National Weather Service.

Accuweather Meteorologist Megan Woodhead said there is a strong possibility that scattered showers and thunderstorms will hit Huron County and other local areas every day until Sunday.

It's expected to rain the most later today and during the day tomorrow, though some areas may see only a quarter of an inch.

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My Comments:
When I was Mayor of Columbia, Virginia, I was leading one of the most flood-prone towns in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Columbia is famous throughout Virginia for its floods. The 2 most prominent floods in Columbia's history occurred in 1969 with Hurricane Camille and in 1972 with Hurricane Agnes. Those 2 major floods basically wiped out the town, so that Columbia 35 years later is a mere shell of its former self.

Little did I know that we would be in for more of the same when we moved to Norwalk, Ohio. We were definitely caught off guard by the extent of the flooding that hit Norwalk last week. I found it somewhat ironic in learning last week that the last major flood that Norwalk experienced was back in 1969 - as a result of Hurricane Camille, the same flood that virtually destroyed Columbia.

Camille must have been one big, bad momma storm to cause the amount of death and destruction it did along the Gulf Coast, sweeping up the Mississippi River valley, through the Ohio Valley, and into the mid-Atlantic - and maintaining much of her strength the whole length of her journey. Sorta makes Katrina look like a strong spring breeze.