Princeton residents struggle with flooded basements after 7 inches of rain

PRINCETON — Princeton Mayor Joel Quiram spent much of the weekend fielding calls and Facebook messages about flooded basements — and also cleaning his basement.

“I received phone calls and a lot of social media messages and such as that regarding other people getting water in their basement while at the same time addressing the problem in our basement. Some people in Princeton got 2-3 feet of water,” Quiram said Sunday night. “Our basement, we just had enough to cover the floor.”

Bureau, Putnam & Marshall County Health Department is offering free flood cleanup kits and is open in Princeton until 4 p.m. Monday.

On his Facebook account over the weekend, Quiram stated: “I apologize for those with sanitary backups. It’s a problem we continue to work on by replacing sanitary main lines, and we’ll continue to do so. When we have the amount of rain we received today and in the short time period we received it, it becomes very challenging for all of us to deal with the issue.”

He said he feels bad for people who had possessions destroyed by basement floods.

“I’ve seen some people, it’s just the entire frontage of their house out by the street is just covered with their possessions,” he said.

The city’s garbage hauler will pick up flood-damaged items on garbage routes. Residents should not put out electronic items and televisions at the curb, however.

Quiram likened the deluge of rain Friday to the torrential rains that caused basement flooding, as well as creek and river flooding, in September 2008.

“That storm I think we had 9 inches over a day and a half period. It was over Homestead and we canceled Homestead Festival,” Quiram said, adding that this rain event might have been worse.

He said this time, Princeton received about 7 inches of rain in about 13 hours.

Some residents saw flooding where sanitary sewers had just been replaced, such as North Euclid, Quiram said. He said the problem is, miles and miles of old, clay sanitary sewers have cracks that allow inundation from groundwater, and when the ground is saturated, the sewers fill up and can back up — even into locations with newer sewer.

“Our sanitary sewers all over town, when we popped the manhole covers, the water was right up to the street. People were getting water in basements where it hadn’t happened before and in other areas of town where they hadn’t had water for years,” he said.

Quiram said the lift stations in the city functioned properly and city crews set up pumps at key locations around town prior to the storm. However, the pumps “struggled to keep up with the water.”

“On Thompson Street, the sanitary sewer was full for 24 hours. (The pumps) ran all day yesterday. They were able to shut them off early this morning,” Quiram said.

The mayor said the city has been replacing and upgrading sanitary sewer “more in the past four years,” but there’s still a lot of work to do that costs millions of dollars. The city replaced the sanitary sewer vein from Clark to Central Street in the alley and last year finished sewer replacement at Miles Court and North Euclid.