Heartache left in wake of Lakemore flash flood
Akron Beacon Journal
Aug. 2, 2006
Bessie Hopkins paced back and forth in her empty living room, her feet making the sodden wood beneath her feet bow with every step.
She hung up the phone and her eyes welled with tears. Her insurance company had informed her the water damage from Monday night’s storm would not be covered.
“I’m not OK,” she sobbed. “I’ve lost everything.”
More than 100 Lakemore homes were flooded by storm water that drenched the village between 4 and 6 p.m. Monday, Mayor David E. Carter said.
“It’s been crazy, absolutely crazy,” he said. “We got hit with a ton of water … and there was no place for it to go.”
Mike Abair, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Cleveland, said 3.8 inches of rain was recorded at Akron Fulton International Airport from 8 a.m. Monday through 8 a.m. Tuesday.
The flooded area was largely from Front Street to Sixth Street in Lakemore’s residential area.
Hopkins returned to her home from a cigarette run Monday night and saw the water lapping at her doorstep.
“The next thing I knew, it just started coming in under the floors and through my vents,” she said. She and her husband, Hibbard, began to pump the water from the house before they realized there was nowhere for it to go.
“It just came so quick,” she said. “It just devastated me. I lost everything.” Hopkins’ home filled with almost 3 feet of water.
As neighbors began to evacuate to a Red Cross shelter at Edwin Shaw Rehabilitation Center, Hopkins gathered what belongings she could and rushed them upstairs.
“This is our home and we were not going to leave it, come hell or high water, and we had the high water,” she said.
Across the street from Hopkins, neighbors were piling their sopping-wet belongings outside to await trash pickup. Jim and Carla Waddell were commiserating with neighbors as people in pickup trucks began loading them with stoves, washing machines and dryers from street corners.
“You can’t imagine how it feels inside when you come home and your front lawn looks like a lake,” Carla Waddell said.
No flood insurance
She, like many of her neighbors, didn’t have flood insurance. “Nobody here does,” she said. “They say this isn’t a flood area. We’ve got news for ‘em.”
An initial assessment by the Red Cross said 90 homes had minor damage, 10 homes were severely damaged and two were deemed destroyed.
Some places in the village had 6 to 8 feet of water when the flooding was at its peak, Mayor Carter said.
Springfield Lake was 2 feet higher Tuesday than it had been Monday before the storm, he said. Carter said the lake — where the village’s storm water is discharged — did not overflow its banks. Goodyear on Tuesday opened all the valves to let the lake discharge to the Little Cuyahoga River, he said.
A rain gauge indicated that Lakemore got 6 1/4 inches of rain in 90 minutes, although that total has not been confirmed by the U.S. Weather Service, he said.
“I’ve lived in Lakemore for 50 years, and I’ve never seen a storm like it,” Carter said. “It was like a cloud came over Lakemore and drenched us with a steady downpour for 90 minutes. It never moved. It was a 200-year rain that hit us in 90 minutes. It was unbelievable.”
Residents return
The Red Cross shelter closed about 2 a.m. Tuesday as residents returned to their homes. Since then, members of the Summit County Red Cross Disaster Action Team have made constant rounds through the neighborhood, assessing damage and handing out food, water and cleaning kits.
Jim Waddell said emergency workers and Red Cross volunteers were on the scene in less than an hour. “God bless ‘em. They were awesome,” he said. “They’re the heroes.”
At the Summit County Red Cross kitchen on West Market Street, volunteers prepared spaghetti, rolls and salad for 200 hungry victims of flooding.
Fire departments from Coventry and Springfield townships and Uniontown assisted Lakemore after Monday’s storm, Carter said. The village of 2,600 had offers of help from police and fire departments as far away as Hudson, he said.
A Red Cross assessment team is to visit each of the damaged houses in Lakemore today.
Other flooding
The heavy rains also hit parts of East Akron and Springfield Township.
Akron had about 18 calls of flooded basements, mostly from Ellet and Goodyear Heights, said Michael McGlinchy, head of the Public Utilities Bureau.
On Multnoma Avenue, Maureen Edwards found herself dealing Monday night with a basement full of sewage for the second time in two years.
Edwards works from her basement, caring for handicapped children. The basement is furnished with a kitchen and bathroom, and she had just made a final payment on new carpet.
“Basically, my business has come to a screeching halt and I’m going to have to send my clients elsewhere now,” she said.
Edwards said the sewage department didn’t visit her home until Tuesday; workers refused to give her their names before they left and they haven’t returned or called.
In Lakemore, residents are banding together and trying to keep a positive attitude, Jim Waddell said. When he and Carla went to a Denny’s restaurant for breakfast Tuesday morning, he said, the management refused to let him pay for his meal.
“If everyone every day did one small thing, we could turn this world around,” he said. “You don’t see that in the world unless something bad happens.”
The Red Cross is asking for donations to help pay for food and supplies for flood-affected areas. Donations to the Disaster Relief Fund can be sent to the Summit County Chapter at 501 W. Market St., Akron, OH 44303.
