MOSCOW -- Flash flooding hit homes following torrential downpours this weekend.
Some people in the Moscow area say they measured more than a half-foot of rain Saturday and even more fell Sunday. Now they are cleaning up.
A number of creeks run through the Moscow area in Lackawanna County and many of them overflowed during the rainstorm Saturday. The damage was especially bad along Brook Street, a neighborhood that is all too familiar with floods.
Christmas ornaments floated in a basement as a pump worked to clear the water away.
People living along Bear Brook in Moscow had their hands full a day after a major rainstorm spawned a vicious flash flood.
A sea of water swept through yards, swamping the basements of about half a dozen homes. At the height of the flood, Bear Brook was so powerful that the water broke the rail and crossed the road carrying piles of branches.
Bear Brook runs along Route 690 and flows into Roaring Brook.
Not only did the flood damage items in Richard Granville's basement, it obliterated the yard. The tomato plants are history, replaced by mud, rocks, and wood.
“It's pretty aggravating, not so much that it flooded, but ruining your stuff and then you have to start all over again. It's kind of hard,” Granville said.
Right next door, Brooke Newman and her family had to pile the contents of their cellar in the living room.
“The problem is everything trickles downward, and it came into our neighbor’s basement and it flooded us, and it just keeps going down the road like dominos,” Newman said.
People in the area tell Newswatch 16 they are frustrated, believing at least some of the flood damage could be prevented.
“The borough sent their backhoe. They dug it out, so the water could get down through the pipe, but it just clogs up the pipe and flows over the top,” said Larry Hartpence, a landlord.
Hartpence says the pipe that carries Bear Brook under a private road is too narrow and insists years of complaints to state, local, and county officials have not solved the problem.
The cleanup also continues in other parts of Lackawanna County that were flooded Saturday. For some areas, it was the second flood in a week.
