Heavy rains throughout the day and night of Sept. 26 overwhelmed Bruce’s drainage system flooding roads as well as some businesses and homes. Mayor Rudy Pope said at Tuesday’s board meeting that the town received “a lot of complaints about flooding.”
“We had people get water in their house. I don’t blame them (being upset),” Mayor Pope said. “When you have that much rain in that short of time it’s going to happen. This happens here about once a year.”
Michael Herrod, who lives on West Clay Street, blamed the town’s lack of maintenance of the culvert and ditches near his home for his house being flooded.
“I bought the house 10 years ago. I’ve had three floodings, and insurance has gone up five times since I bought it,” Herrod said.
He said the culvert couldn’t carry any water and the ditch needs widening.
“I’m having to tear out the whole house,” Herrod said. “I’m having an engineer come to look at the property to see what can be done.”
“We will take a look at it,” Mayor Pope said.
The deepest flooding was in South Bruce where all the water flows to reach the river.
“We have big culverts going into smaller culverts,” Alderman John Earl Armstrong said. “There’s no way they can carry that water. It all backs up. It needs to be fixed.”
“We’ve got that all over town,” Mayor Pope said.
Several roads in town had to be barricaded that night due to deep water making it too dangerous to drive through.
An exact reporting on the number of homes and businesses that took on water is still being tabulated.