Valley residents were cleaning up and drying out Tuesday after an intense summer storm complete with quarter-sized hail turned much of Ansonia and Derby into chaos Monday night.
There was a mudslide on Main Street in downtown Ansonia, numerous flooded homes and vehicles on Derby’s Seymour Avenue and dangerous arcing power lines on Wakelee Avenue. There were no injuries reported.
The storm was similar to a freakish storm that damaged Seymour July 8.
This time, however, Seymour was mostly spared, according to officials at Town Hall. This time Mother Nature focused on Ansonia and Derby exclusively.
“This was the worst storm I’ve seen in Ansonia all my life,” said Ansonia Assistant Fire Chief Michael Eheman. “I can’t remember hail for the length of time we were getting it. Normally they last five minutes and it’s gone. I would say this had to be a good 15 or 20 minutes.”
The rains came down heavy from 6:45 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., said Ron Culmo, Derby’s public works director.
The fast and heavy rainfall inundated storm drains, causing widespread flash flooding.
The residue of all the flooding made for a massive, all-day clean up job Tuesday.
“We’re cleaning up right now, Seymour Avenue, Hawthorne Avenue, Spring Street, Elizabeth Street — the water was like two-feet high in the middle of the road,” Culmo said. “There was big flooding by Apollo Pizza and the Dewdrop Inn (off Route 34), because storm drains were not big enough to handle the water at one time,” Culmo said.
Wires Down!
Wires and electrical lines arcing were a problem throughout Ansonia and Derby.
In Derby, a tree came down across the entrance of the Sons of Italy Club at 73 High Street, taking live wires with it.
“There were 12 people still inside the parking lot, they couldn’t leave until United Illuminating cleared it out at roughly 11 o’clock,” said Derby Assistant Chief Kurt Kemmesies Jr.
“The fire calls were overwhelming last night,” said Eileen Krugel, a firefighter for Ansonia who is also grant writer for the city.
Eheman said the fire calls did not slow down until 11 p.m.
A few public buildings also suffered some flood damage, including a leaking roof at the Ansonia Armory, where some ceiling tiles came down, and water seeping through the doors around Ansonia City Hall.
Live wires fell to the ground at the intersection of Wakelee and Hull Street in Ansonia Monday, causing a spectacular display of sparks and flames. Luckily, no one was injured.
The live wires sparked and jumped around, as the Ansonia Fire Department waited for the utility company to cut the power.
Several people were inside the home at the time, but because the wires were close to the front door, they couldn’t safely get out of the house, according to Valley Indy reader, Walt Smith.
Smith happened to be driving through the area after power lines were downed in front of a Wakelee Avenue home.
So he did what any earnest Valley Indy reader would do: He grabbed his video camera, shot some video of the scene and posted it to the Valley Indy Facebook page.
Here is Smith’s video:
The wires were touching a metal fence that ran along the outside of the property, and Ansonia firefighters were trying to communicate with people inside the home.
The people couldn’t come out the front door because that’s where the live wires were, Smith said. And there didn’t appear to be a back exit from the home, he said.
“It was very well controlled,” Smith said. “The Ansonia Fire Department did a great job controlling the crowd and managing people.”
No one was home at the house Tuesday morning, and phone messages were left with the home’s owner.
Smith admitted Tuesday he might have gotten a little too close to the wires — which were flaming and sparking in the front yard of the two-family home. You can see toward the end of the video, a firefighter asks him to move away from the scene.
“I’m the first to admit, I was foolish for getting as close as I did to get that video,” Smith said. “But I knew not to step in the puddles of water.”
Two Restaurants Knocked Offline
Burger King, on Pershing Drive in Ansonia, got walloped by the heavy rain fall.
A portion of the roof over the drive-through section of the restaurant suffered damage about 8:15 p.m. There was some five inches of water on the building itself, which seeped into the restaurant, causing ceiling tiles inside to collapse.
Workers at the scene Tuesday morning were mopping up water from the floors, saying they did not know when the restaurant would reopen.
The nearby McDonald’s restaurant, on Division Street in Derby, also got whacked.
The entire Division Street area was flooded with about 4.5 feet of water at about 7:30 p.m., according to firefighters.
McDonald’s manager Nancy Contreras said the restaurant had to close between 9 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. to clean up flooding in the customer lobby.
“The water was this deep,” she said, showing a depth of several inches with her finger gestures.
Here is a video interview with Contreras:
The parking lot water pump failed and water built up in the parking lot to as much as five inches deep, as seen in photographs from the scene posted online by witnesses.
The restaurant reopened around midnight, and on Tuesday Contreras was hoping to make up for lost business during the storm.
A hill washed out on Main Street near Platt Street, and the dirt and grass came down in a mudslide onto Main Street. Firefighters and Department of Public Works employees were there Tuesday morning cleaning up.
Check out the video:
