Mother and daughter Rosalie and Carol Cota both had to call out of work Tuesday because their cars had several inches of water in them.
The women live at 240 Seymour Ave. in Derby, where Monday’s rain flooded garages and basements, and damaged several cars on the street.
Carol, the daughter, said she had about 5 inches of water in her backseat Tuesday morning. Her mother, Rosalie, had about 3 inches.
“I couldn’t drive with water sloshing all over me,” Rosalie said Tuesday.
This is the second time this summer the neighborhood has flooded, and Monday’s storm was the worst in years, according to residents. Click here to read a full account of the storms.
Several people in the neighborhood spent Monday night and Tuesday cleaning up after the storm.
Luisa Wilber, owns the property at 240 Seymour Ave. and has lived there since 1957.
Monday night into Tuesday morning was a struggle against water for her.
Although Wilber has a sump pump, it’s 15 years old and was broken, so Wilber had to operate the machine by hand. She said she was up all night pumping the water out of her basement.
“I was crying,” Wilber said.
“There was lots and lots of water,” Wilber said. “I was so scared.”
Around the corner at 8 Summer St., Steve Lawrence, Jr. had two feet of water in his garage, where he parks his restored 1968 Chevy Chevelle.
Luckily, the car was up on a jack at the time, and avoided serious damage. The water came up to the tires, Lawrence said.
His other car was sitting in the driveway, and was not so lucky.
It had 3 inches in the back seat, he said.
Lawrence and other residents in the neighborhood blamed poor drainage on the street for the problems, but Derby public works officials said the flooding was caused by the severity of Monday’s storm.
“It just keeps getting worse,” Lawrence said. “There’s only two drains down this whole road, and there’s only one on the corner there,” he said, adding that the town should add more drains and more sewer lines.
Lawrence’s landlord, Gale Murano said that she called the Department of Public Works about the placement of the storm drains on Summer street.
Public Works Director Ron Culmo disagreed with the assessment of Summer Street residents.
“They claim that the catch basins are in the wrong place. They’re not in the wrong place,” Culmo said.
“We’ve had storms in the last several years that have been not normal,” Culmo said. “Normally we get a rainstorm. These are monsoons.”
Culmo said that there are no plans to adjust the pipes in the neighborhood.
To re-do the sewers around Summer street, the public works department would need to re-do all of Derby, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, Culmo said.
No one was injured during the storms Monday.
Firefighters were out most of the night responding to calls in the Valley.
One of those calls was at 230 Seymour Ave., where Susan Smith had water in her basement up to her thighs.
The firefighters of East End Hose Company came to her rescue at about midnight last night, and pumped water from her basement, she said.
“They were incredible,” she said.
