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City cleans up after floods

Friday, June 5, 2009
(Updated 1:47 pm)

GREENSBORO — Residents of Wafco Mills condominiums walked past furniture caked in mud and debris Thursday to find what they could salvage from second-floor rooms untouched by floodwaters.

Cleaning crews hauled away three large Dumpsters of trash by 3 p.m. and estimated five more would be needed to empty debris and ruined building materials from the five condos.

City inspectors condemned the condos near Weaver Academy and two other sites elsewhere in the city because of flooding from Wednesday’s storm, which dumped 4 to 8 inches of rain on parts of Guilford County.

The Greensboro Fire Department responded to at least 115 calls between 4:30 and

9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Assistant Chief David Douglas said.

Many calls were about vehicles, some occupied, stalled in water. No one was injured in those incidents. But Browns Summit resident Roseanne Marie Minton Tippett, 50, died in northeast Guilford County when she jumped into a swollen creek, possibly to retrieve her moped, family members said.

More thunderstorms with heavy rain were expected overnight, with additional rain forecast for this afternoon.

Douglas urged motorists to be cautious. Never drive into water — moving or stagnant.

“You don’t know what’s under that water,” Douglas said.

Wednesday’s deluge created problems because rain fell so quickly — several inches in less than 30 minutes in some cases — that creeks spilled over their banks and water could not drain quickly.

Water damaged old case files stored at the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department on Washington Street and forced a dozen workers to relocate.

“We did get a fair amount of damage in the basement,” Col. Randy Powers said. “Some of those records were pretty well saturated. ...There are some that are critical that we are told are salvageable.”

Officials reported minor damage to the library and Cultural Arts Center.

At Eugene and Lindsay streets, water rose to the height of parking meters and seeped into offices. NewBridge Bank Park, home of the Greensboro Grasshoppers, backs up to that intersection, but weathered the storm with few ill effects.

“It could have been worse,” said Ed Wolverton, president and CEO of Downtown Greensboro Inc. “Police and fire did a good job.”

Water flooded more than a dozen buildings at UNCG and forced the child care center on North Drive to close for the day.

Several dormitories  had leaks and flooding, but no student rooms were affected and no one had to be moved, university officials said.

Just outside downtown, two churches reported flooding. About 4,000 gallons seeped into a large first-floor classroom at First Baptist Church on Friendly Avenue.

 And water flooded seven basement rooms at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Market Street.

At Bessemer Avenue and Huffman Street, Thomas Mitchell was among workers clearing out water with fans and vacuums Thursday in the former Global Auto Sales building, which is being converted into a cellular phone store.

He estimated the water rose about 8 inches high inside the building, but closer to 2 feet outside the door.

Next door, insurance adjusters looked at inventory for Jay’s Used Cars.

“Some of the cars are going to be total losses,” owner Jay Smith said. “The only ones that will remain here will be the ones that were unaffected.”

In the county, water seeped into the basement of Natasha Holding’s home in the Manchester neighborhood off

McKnight Mill Road.

She said the water was as high as her mailbox by the street, but did not spill over the stoop into her house.

“To see it to the mailbox door, that was amazing,” said Holding, 33.

“I’ve never seen water stand so deep.”

The rain also damaged her roof, causing a leak over her master bedroom. She was trying to find out what her insurance will cover.

“This is not considered a flood zone,” she said. “So none of us have flood insurance.”

At Wafco Mills, Matthew Dennis also worried about flood insurance. He doesn’t have any and figures his condo, which he owns, is a complete loss.

Firefighters had to pluck Dennis, 37, from his second-story window Wednesday. The water, which rose to 7 feet in some of the condos, flooded his first floor in 20 to 25 minutes, he said.

The water washed photos off walls, upended refrigerators and stoves, shoved cars into each other in the parking lot, and left behind mud, leaves,  branches and mulch in areas where residents had once lounged in front of TVs and sat for meals.

Evan Armfield, 19, helped a friend clean out his condo Thursday. Armfield rescued two Adirondack chairs that safely weathered the flood in a second-story balcony.

“It looks like a hurricane came through here,” Armfield said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Staff writers Donald W. Patterson, Jamie Kennedy Jones and Joe Killian contributed to this report.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com 

Accompanying Photos

H. Scott Hoffmann (News & Record)

Photo Caption: Matthew Dennis carries out a table from his condominium at Wafco Mill in downtown Greensboro on June 4.

So how hard did it rain?

National Weather Service radar indicated that the storm that moved through Guilford County late in the afternoon could have dumped 8 inches of rain in an area east of U.S. 29 North in about two hours. However, weather service officials say they can’t confirm such a reading. “It’s a rough estimate,” said Ryan Ellis, a meteorologist in Raleigh. “It could have happened. We just don’t have enough data to know that it did happen.” If the allotted area near Reedy Fork Parkway and Eckerson Road did get 8 inches of rain, it would exceed the heaviest rainfall ever recorded over a 24-hour period in Guilford County. On Sept. 24, 1947, the airport reported 7.4 inches of rain.

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