LORAIN, Ohio — In some South Lorain neighborhoods on Tuesday evening, streets turned to streams and roads to rivers.
“I work from home, and it starts raining, the kids are excited; 'Oh it’s raining,' I’m like crap that’s not fun for me,” said Katherine Bronish.
Bronish has lived in her South Lorain home for five years. She started having issues with flooding in July 2023.
“September rolls around and it happens again, and this time goes all the way up to our porch line and up the stairs and floods our entire basement,” she explained.
The flood, she said, ruined everything in her basement, including childhood memories packed away.
On Tuesday, Bronish and her husband spent time trying to clean out the sewers near her home so the water could recede after the rain.
“About an hour into it I was like ok, this isn’t going down, I called the sewer department and they said they would be out in a half hour and they didn’t,” she explained.
She wasn’t the only one frustrated.
Lorain Councilmember Angel Arroyo took to Facebook with frustration.
“It shouldn’t have happened, it definitely shouldn’t have happened,” said Arroyo.
He said on Wednesday, the street department was clearing the debris from near sewers, and workers were putting cameras down into the sewage system to make sure things were working properly.
Joe Carbonaro with the Lorain Sewer Department said the city is designing and putting out to bid a $20 million project aimed at increasing capacity at the Pearl Avenue and Tacoma Avenue Pump Station. He said the pump station was overwhelmed on Tuesday despite all the equipment operating as designed.
