Some folks would have called it a “gully-washer,” others a “toad strangler,” but the bottom line is that the storm that swept through Washington on Thursday afternoon carried way too much water for the city to handle in a short period of time.
“We had a thunderstorm move in and just about the time it moved in it blew up dropped a couple of inches of rain in a short period of time. It caused some flooding in the usual areas. It was just a really heavy rain that we didn’t need,” said Daviess County Emergency Management Agency Director Scott Myers. “The weather service had put out a flood warning for one to two inches per hour but we got ours in half of that time. I would say we got around two inches in less than half an hour. That’s way too much for the storm sewers to handle. It hits the streets and the pavement and the storm sewers just can’t carry it all away quickly enough.”
The storm was small, basically, sitting on #Washington for a short time, but during a 30-minue span it dumped two inches of water.
“West Main there at the Library got flooded so they wound up with some flooding. We didn’t get like the bigger rain amounts like four plus inches. It wasn’t a case of a giant volume still it was way too much in a very short period of time,” said Myers. “The hospital and the library wound up with flooding and we had some streets flood. I am certain some basements were flooded but we had no other reports of flooding getting into and damaging homes.”
The water wound up closing the Washington Carnegie Public Library for the weekend. Officials posted the following notice on their Facebook page.
“Due to today’s heavy rain and flooding, the library will be closed July 18 & 19 for cleanup.
No major damage—just a few inches of water on the first floor. We’re taking time to dry out and sanitize the space for everyone’s safety.
We’ll reopen Monday, July 21 as usual. Thanks for your patience and support!”
The heavy rain brought back a recurring problem with flooding at Daviess Community Hospital.
“Any water in your house or business is bad. We got some clean-up crews in right away and had most of it cleaned up in a few hours. There are going to be some services affected in the short term. We are going to be especially cautious in areas where we have CT machines and other high voltage equipment. We want to make certain there is no hazard,” said President of the Daviess Community Hospital Board Deron Steiner. “There were two Operating Rooms that had water in them and two that didn’t. “
This is at least the third flood at the hospital in the last few years. In past floods water has come out of the storm sewers through drains inside the building. Officials say they have a fix for that problem. They just don’t have it implemented yet.
“We have approved the plans to mitigate this. They are waiting on some parts and pieces to arrive. They are going to put in four sump pumps and reroute some drainage,” said Steiner. “It’s a $500,000 to $600,000 project. It has just taken time to get the engineering done and get everything approved. We have been working through this process over the last 10 months.”
While most of the mess has been cleaned up Myers says more flash flooding could be possible.
“It’s pretty much gone, but the forecast is for more of the same type of weather so we could see more of these heavy storms putting down a lot of water in a short time causing more flooding all into next week,” he said.