More than 18 hours after the neighborhood flooded, a man made his way through the intersection of Brian Lane and Gregory Drive in West Seneca on Sunday afternoon – in a rowboat.
The night before, when firefighters arrived to evacuate residents of the Lexington Green subdivision from a quickly growing lake dotted with huge chunks of ice from Buffalo Creek, the water there had been chest-deep, neighbors said.
“There were icebergs in the street,” said John Wojtkowiak, a retired toll collector.
Those huge chunks of ice created havoc amid the quick thaw from last week’s polar vortex, spurred by unusually high temperatures.
By midday Sunday, most of those icebergs were gone, many of them removed by town highway crews, although it was hard to tell exactly how much the water level had retreated.
But one thing was clear: Cleanup efforts inside dozens of basements were well underway.
Along Lexington Green, piles of unsalvageable items were growing bigger on many front lawns, claiming among the casualties: a floral couch, various Little Tykes toys, a dartboard, defunct space heaters, a big TV, and countless cardboard boxes and Rubbermaid bins.
Throughout the neighborhood, the relative quiet of a crisp winter day was overtaken by the steady hum of pumps hard at work removing water from basements.
Nearly every house seemed to have a fire department truck – whether from down the road in West Seneca or elsewhere in the county, such as Clarence Center – parked in its driveway, with volunteer firefighters supervising the long and tedious pumping, sending water up from the basement and down the driveway through a wide hose.
About 70 homes were flooded to one extent or another when Buffalo Creek flooded Saturday evening, town officials said.
The flooding began around 6:30 p.m. Saturday, when water from the creek backed up through storm sewers, according to John Gullo, who oversees emergency operations for the town.
At the peak of the flooding, there was as much as four or five feet of water in the streets, he said. For the most part, flooding seemed confined to basements. Houses saw anywhere from a couple of inches of water in the basement to several feet.
Wojtkowiak and his wife, Beverly, had just eaten dinner when Beverly looked outside and noticed the flooding. They and their daughter, Michelle White, raced down to the basement to shut off the furnace and salvage what little they could from White’s bedroom and the rest of the basement.
Before they knew it, the water had risen to the top step in the basement. White’s brand-new mattress was soon floating, along with her children’s Smurfs DVDs, toys, and boxes of Christmas decorations that had just been taken down.
“Everything in the basement is gone,” said Beverly, a retired nurse. “We just put a bedroom down there for my daughter. It’s totally gone. All our memories are down there. That’s where we store everything.”
Late Saturday, the Wojtkowiaks and White – along with White’s three children, Faith, 11; Dylan, 8; and Curtis, 2; as well as the Wojtkowiak’s two Munchkin cats, Marshmallow and Cocoa – were evacuated by riding in the scoop of a frontloader.
When the Wojtkowkiaks came back Sunday to survey the damage, they discovered nearly everything in the basement to be a total loss. And in the driveway, the floors of three of their cars – a Cruze, a Malibu and an Equinox, all of them 2013 models – had become waterlogged. In two of the cars, the water had reached high enough to soak the seats.
“Thank God we have flood insurance,” Beverly Wojtkowiak said.
Town Supervisor Sheila M. Meegan said she is working with State Sen. Patrick M. Gallivan to identify funds to assist homeowners who do not have flood insurance. She said she is organizing a meeting sometime this week for those affected by the flooding. Details had not been finalized as of Sunday evening.
email: mpasciak@buffnews.com
The night before, when firefighters arrived to evacuate residents of the Lexington Green subdivision from a quickly growing lake dotted with huge chunks of ice from Buffalo Creek, the water there had been chest-deep, neighbors said.
“There were icebergs in the street,” said John Wojtkowiak, a retired toll collector.
Those huge chunks of ice created havoc amid the quick thaw from last week’s polar vortex, spurred by unusually high temperatures.
By midday Sunday, most of those icebergs were gone, many of them removed by town highway crews, although it was hard to tell exactly how much the water level had retreated.
But one thing was clear: Cleanup efforts inside dozens of basements were well underway.
Along Lexington Green, piles of unsalvageable items were growing bigger on many front lawns, claiming among the casualties: a floral couch, various Little Tykes toys, a dartboard, defunct space heaters, a big TV, and countless cardboard boxes and Rubbermaid bins.
Throughout the neighborhood, the relative quiet of a crisp winter day was overtaken by the steady hum of pumps hard at work removing water from basements.
Nearly every house seemed to have a fire department truck – whether from down the road in West Seneca or elsewhere in the county, such as Clarence Center – parked in its driveway, with volunteer firefighters supervising the long and tedious pumping, sending water up from the basement and down the driveway through a wide hose.
About 70 homes were flooded to one extent or another when Buffalo Creek flooded Saturday evening, town officials said.
The flooding began around 6:30 p.m. Saturday, when water from the creek backed up through storm sewers, according to John Gullo, who oversees emergency operations for the town.
At the peak of the flooding, there was as much as four or five feet of water in the streets, he said. For the most part, flooding seemed confined to basements. Houses saw anywhere from a couple of inches of water in the basement to several feet.
Wojtkowiak and his wife, Beverly, had just eaten dinner when Beverly looked outside and noticed the flooding. They and their daughter, Michelle White, raced down to the basement to shut off the furnace and salvage what little they could from White’s bedroom and the rest of the basement.
Before they knew it, the water had risen to the top step in the basement. White’s brand-new mattress was soon floating, along with her children’s Smurfs DVDs, toys, and boxes of Christmas decorations that had just been taken down.
“Everything in the basement is gone,” said Beverly, a retired nurse. “We just put a bedroom down there for my daughter. It’s totally gone. All our memories are down there. That’s where we store everything.”
Late Saturday, the Wojtkowiaks and White – along with White’s three children, Faith, 11; Dylan, 8; and Curtis, 2; as well as the Wojtkowiak’s two Munchkin cats, Marshmallow and Cocoa – were evacuated by riding in the scoop of a frontloader.
When the Wojtkowkiaks came back Sunday to survey the damage, they discovered nearly everything in the basement to be a total loss. And in the driveway, the floors of three of their cars – a Cruze, a Malibu and an Equinox, all of them 2013 models – had become waterlogged. In two of the cars, the water had reached high enough to soak the seats.
“Thank God we have flood insurance,” Beverly Wojtkowiak said.
Town Supervisor Sheila M. Meegan said she is working with State Sen. Patrick M. Gallivan to identify funds to assist homeowners who do not have flood insurance. She said she is organizing a meeting sometime this week for those affected by the flooding. Details had not been finalized as of Sunday evening.
email: mpasciak@buffnews.com