Heavy rain causes flooding in Chartiers, South Strabane townships
Rodney Whitfield walks with a child he pulled from a car that was stuck in floodwaters on Country Club Road in South Strabane Township on Monday. Whitfield said the little girl and her mother were trapped inside the vehicle, and the water was nearly up to their seats. Whitfield got the girl out through the window. Both she and her mother were fine.
Country Club Road in South Strabane Township was impassable because of flash flooding in the area Monday evening.
A storm that swept through the area about 7 p.m. Monday seemed to stall over Chartiers and South Strabane townships, causing storm drains and creeks to spill onto several roads and flooding dozens of basements.
Jodi Noble, Chartiers manager, said she received an unconfirmed report that 1.7 inches of rain fell in 45 minutes on top of another inch that fell Monday afternoon.
“There was a lot of water that fell very fast,” Noble said Tuesday. “Plus the ground is so saturated, it just couldn’t take any more.”
A woman and her young daughter were rescued by a passerby after their car was submerged by floodwaters on Country Club Road near Locust Avenue in South Strabane.
Rodney Whitfield and his wife, Anne Whitfield, were on Country Club approaching Locust when he noticed the car in the water.
“At first, I thought it was abandoned,” Rodney Whitfield, of Chartiers, said Tuesday. “Then, I saw someone sitting in it.”
Whitfield said the current of the water was strong as he walked over to the car and offered to help the stranded driver.
“The water was already up to the seats,” Whitfield said. “I told the woman that they need to get out of there. I was concerned the car would get pulled into the creek.”
The girl, who Whitfield believed was about 3, was lifted out the window. Whitfield said that he was able to push the car a little bit and get the car door open. South Strabane firefighters also arrived and gave the woman a rope to hold onto as she walked to safety.
“Some areas of the township just got slammed for some reason,” said South Strabane fire Chief Scott Reese. “We had problems on Country Club and on Route 19 at Davis School Road. But in the Laboratory area, there was hardly any rain.”
Reese blamed some of the problem on clogged storm inlets and drains, particularly on Route 19.
“The water had no place to go so it started spilling onto the road,” Reese said. “Off Country Club, there is a tunnel under the storage units where the water drains. But when the level went up, the drains just couldn’t handle it and flooded the road. I was starting to have a flashback of (Hurricane) Ivan.”
“We had problems in weird places,” he added. “It was a slow-moving storm that just hovered.”
Chartiers police Chief James Horvath also said the area impacted by the flooding was “weird,” occurring in places not usually known for flooding. McClane Farm and Country Club roads were under water and there was flooding on Old Hickory Ridge Road. He said the fire department pumped water from about 30 basements.
“There was water everywhere,” Horvath said. “We even had tractor-trailers with water up to the chassis.”
Noble said Racetrack Road was closed for a time and there was flooding on several other roads, including Kings, Allison Hollow and Arthurs. Route 519 also flooded and a section of the shoulder near Meddings Road appears to have washed out. Noble said she was going out to look at the problem Tuesday afternoon with representatives of the state Department of Transportation.
“It was a flash flood,” Noble said. We got too much water too quickly. We had 6-foot culverts overflowing. Most drain systems are built to handle 25-year storms. What we got was greater than that.”