Flooding Cleanups Underway, PennDOT Developing New Highway Drainage Plans
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Many streets, homes, and roadways in Pittsburgh were filled with mud and water Thursday following another round of storms.
Today, waters have receded, but plenty of damage has been left behind, especially in Sharpsburg.
WATCH: Residents Clean Up Debris From Recent Floods
Madison Marchand spent her day cleaning out the mud in her basement.
"Pretty time consuming," she said. "Not the best, not ideal, really concerned about the appliances."
She's not sure if her washer, dryer, and hot water heater survived nearly two feet of flooding. Although she tried to flood-proof the appliances after a similar flood that took place a year ago. That didn't stop the rapid downpour from Thursday.
There is widespread damage and growing frustration.
"Tired of it happening, definitely tired of it happening," said Eric Cox. "Anger that it keeps happening."
While appliances can be replaced, some things are irreplaceable.
"I'm a little scared to look at it, frankly," Marchand said of a garment bag that contains her wedding dress.
She was married less than a year ago and now she's afraid to see what the flooding did to her gown.
"I was planning on maybe dying it, making a new dress, but we'll see," she said.
Meanwhile, some of the major roadways were hit hard by yesterday's storms. Including those that rarely, if ever flooding.
This includes the Parkway North and Route 28.
A retention pond is designed to hold the runoff from nearby Troy Hill, but it isn't doing its job.
"We're seeing just recently that these heavy downpours bringing a lot of sediment down, clogging up that retention pond," said PennDOT's Steve Cowan.
This has led engineers to take a look at the retention pond and the hillside so they can come up with a new drainage plan, hoping to avoid a repeat of Thursday.
"It's very difficult for our crews, once the traffic starts queuing up to actually get to that location to try to resolve the issue," Cowan said. "It's a problem all the way around."
The same goes for I-279, the Parkway North.
It's designed not to flood, but with a torrential downpour, one lane near Mt. Nebo Road was flooded and closed.
"We do have an issue on 279 when we get these torrential downpours, a lot of the sediment in the median is clogging up the inlets," Cowan said.
With more sediment and more flooding, what's the solution?
"They'll probably do some rock lining through there," said Cowan.
In the meantime, we're all bracing for the next storm in what has been the summer of showers.
