Feb 17, 2018 4 min read

Erich Cushey is no stranger to flooding in his Canton Township business, but Thursday brought significantly more damage and destruction than he was used to. The only option he’s left with is leaving.

“Move. That’s all you can do,” to combat the flooding, he said.

Cushey, co-owner of Curtis Pharmacy on Henderson Avenue, said Thursday night’s heavy rainfall blew out one of the store’s front windows, forcing vitamins and other over-the-counter medicines across the roadway. Chartiers Creek runs behind the pharmacy.

The store has been in its current location for 11 years, but issues with flooding are a relatively new development. This is the third time his store has flooded since July. Heavy rain in January brought about a foot of water into the store. Cushey is currently preparing to move his business to the former Foodland building, just a few blocks away, but that building needs about two or three months of work before it’s ready.

Until then, staff will only be filling prescriptions at their Washington location, reopening Monday.

“It’s not the prettiest, but it works,” he said.

Business will continue at the Claysville store. The computers and printers were all lost. No prescription pharmaceuticals were lost in the floods, and Cushey said he was at the store until 2 a.m. Friday. Several cars were also waterlogged along Henderson Avenue.

On Saturday, as staff worked to clean up, he motioned to the store’s dumpster, stuck in the creek.

“Not sure how we’re getting that out of there,” he said.

After heavy rains Thursday night into Friday, a river flood warning remained in effect for the Monongahela River near Charleroi until late Saturday night.

At 1 p.m. Saturday, the stage was 32.1 feet. Flood stage is at 28 feet, and waters continued to recede throughout Saturday. At the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Locks and Dam No. 4 in Charleroi, roads along the river were mostly clear. Workers were just waiting for waters to settle.

According to the National Weather Service Saturday, levels of area rivers are starting to fall, but many remain above flood stage. Rivers in the area should fall below flood stage within a day, but will remain higher than normal through mid-week.

Lee Hendricks, a meteorologist at the weather service in Pittsburgh, said though snow and rain were expected Saturday into Sunday, it is not expected to impact river levels significantly. The greater challenge will be battling freezing temperatures.

Washington County could see about a quarter of an inch of precipitation, which should not exacerbate area flooding, just make it muddier and messier. For cleanup today, Hendricks recommended to try and wait for temperatures to rise above freezing and any snow to melt.

A mix of snow and rain late Saturday afternoon was expected to gradually change to snow after midnight. Though it may take 12 to 18 hours for rivers to fall below flood stages, it will still take several days for them to return to normal levels.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh district spokesman Jeff Hawk said locks and dams at Charleroi, Elizabeth and Braddock were all out of service Saturday afternoon. Point Marion also saw the Monongahela River rise to 27.66 feet into Saturday, but quickly dropped into the action stage. Major flooding begins at 28 feet.

Hawk cautioned that though the rain stopped, that doesn’t mean flood waters will immediately recede. He said some people may not realize that even after weather passes, the nearby rivers stay “artificially” high due to reservoir release.

“We had a lot of space and we were prepared to capture the storm,” he said of the area reservoirs, which faced moderate rises as rain fell and would begin dumping as soon as they were able and continue through the week.