Heavy Rains In Sharpsburg-Millvale Causes Some Flooding And Debris

SHARPSBURG (KDKA) -- More scattered thunderstorms hit parts of the area Thursday afternoon.

The latest round of severe weather struck the Millvale-Sharpsburg area with drenching rain.

"We were watching the storm on the radar, it was small, and just got very large and just continued to rain for about 45 minutes. It rained very, very hard," said Mike Daniher, the Assistant Chief of the Sharpsburg Volunteer Fire Department.

Kittanning Pike was closed down for a while because of the debris that was washed down from the adjacent hillsides.

"All the water, of course, runs off the hills," Daniher said. "Most of the water from O'Hara Township comes down Kittanning Pike, there are jammed storm drains, as well as catch basins on Route 28 are all plugged up."

Lucky for Sharon Shepard, who lives in Sharpsburg near the Kittanning Pike, under Route 28, she keeps a supply of sandbags on hand.

She needed them on Thursday.

Shepard's house is near the O'Hara Township Line.

"After we had a Fourth of July dinner out here, we got our sandbags to deter the water away from our house so it wouldn't flood the basement again, however, we had to quickly move our cars, because our driveway was flooded," Shepard explained.

Ironically, it was exactly one year ago when Shepard and dozens of other Sharpsburg area homeowners were hit by floods.

The water was running fast and high in a creek called Sites Run which goes through Sharpsburg, and empties into the Allegheny River.

Another couple of feet and the creek would have overflowed its banks and caused significant flooding in Sharpsburg like it did a year ago.