Slippery Rock Borough declares disaster emergency after intense rainfall
Slippery Rock Borough in Butler County has declared a disaster emergency following excessive and intense rainfall that hit the area on Sunday afternoon.
In a statement on social media, Mayor Jondavid Longo issued the declaration, saying dangerous flash flooding has created dangerous conditions for residents and first responders.
Officials told KDKA-TV that numerous streets remain impassable, and Mayor Longo is now directing all residents to stay home and avoid flooded areas unless they are in immediate danger.
The declarations allow the borough to quickly access resources that would otherwise take more time.
In a brief conversation with Longo on Sunday, he said that, unfortunately, many residents' homes were impacted, with water in basements. He said he was working with road crews to get everything cleaned up. They are unaware of any injuries, he said.
"There were several roads that you had to drive through water," said borough council member Jeff Campbell. "Kiester Road was flooded near my in-laws. [Route] 173 had flooding on it. A lot of the storm sewers couldn't handle the amount of rain that was coming down."
Three inches fell in an hour, Campbell said, citing their borough manager.
"This is two times in the last three years that we've seen this, and it's kind of alarming," Campbell said. "A lot of people have water in their basements. There's water in our church; that's where I just came from."
He still had boots on from helping out at the Slippery Rock United Methodist Church, where water had found its way into the basement. They had a similar problem with water across town at the church's parsonage, he said.
"They're going to have to bring a restoration company in, obviously, everything in the carpet and everything in the parsonage is all going to have to be tore up and replaced," Campbell said.
He found the flooding all the more surprising because they have only a few small streams and no large creeks that could overflow. Small culverts overflowed due to the rain.
The last time flooding took place, Campbell said he rescued a woman from her car as floodwater poured in. This time around, he took note of how their community was helping out. The same, he said, goes for their police chief.
"He said that he was amazed at how, you know, just people from the community coming out, moving trees off the road, unclogging storm sewers, things like that, trying to get the water to go down," Campbell said, recounting what the police chief told him earlier in the day.
