By JOSEPH KELLARD
Starting at midnight and continuing until after 10 p.m. last Friday, the OFD received 67 alarm calls related to rainfall that had begun on Monday and rarely relented all week. Most of the calls, the majority of which came in after 5 p.m., concerned utilities, as many homeowners with flooded basements phoned the OFD with requests to shut down their electrical services and gas burners.
³It was a busy day for the fire department,² said Third Assistant Chief Tim Biscay. ³The calls were just non-stop.²
Some basements saw waist-high flooding, requiring firefighters to use special gear to get to utility controls. ³Our men had to use our water rescue suits, which we use when we go out on our boats, because the levels of water in some basements were so high,² Biscay said.
A 15-year veteran of the OFD, Biscay couldn¹t recall a time when he had seen such flooding in Oceanside homes. ³I¹d never seen anything like it before,² he said, ³not during the nor¹easters or snowstorms.²
The areas in Oceanside where homeowners made the most calls to the OFD were in Ocean Harbor (West Weidner Avenue, over the train tracks), Ocean Lea (south of School 8 on Fulton Avenue), East Waukena Avenue south of Oceanside High School, and South Oceanside Road between Waukena Avenue and Mott Street.
³A woman at a house on Oceanside Road said she never had flooding in her basement in over 30 years she has been living there,² Biscay said.
A 30-year resident of Byrd Street, a side street off South Oceanside Road, also said that rainwater had never invaded her home. ³Even when the hurricane hit us back in the mid-¹80s, with the streets flooded and all, there wasn¹t flooding in my basement,² she said.
The five inches that fell on Friday pushed the total rainfall for the month of October on Long Island to a new record. The previous record was 11.43 inches, set in 1955. As of early last Saturday, after week-long rains varied at times from light to Calcutta-like, the total reached 13 inches for the month. Average rainfall in October is 3.69 inches.
Asked why he thought many homes were experiencing flooding, Biscay alluded to the fact that the rains were relentless throughout the week. ³The ground just got so saturated that the level of water kept coming back up, and it was cracking foundations in homes,² he said.
While the OFD reported no injuries during the storms, EMTs did bring a woman to South Nassau Communities Hospital for a panic attack, and they supplied backup oxygen to a man on an oxygen concentrator when the power went out in his home.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the constant calls to the OFD, Island Park Fire Department Chief James Verrichio said his department received few, if any, calls related to the heavy winds and rain last week. Island Park, of course, had its share of flooding, too. The intersections along Nassau Lane, which runs parallel to the LIRR tracks, experienced a few feet of flooding, and cars, SUVs and taxies had to forge their way through the water. Other motorists weren¹t so lucky, as some abandoned their flooded cars on streets in Island Park, including Long Beach Road.
Service on the Long Beach branch of the LIRR was suspended during Friday¹s rush hour, as flood waters submerged the tracks along areas of this street-level line, including Island Park and Oceanside.
As usual in heavy rainstorms, water covered the entire block, including sidewalks and front yards, on Kings Highway in Oceanside, flowing out to the middle of neighboring Mott Street on Friday.
On Saturday, as the sun made its first appearance in over a week and floodwaters on streets went into retreat, new bodies of water began to form, as pump lines snaked out from residents¹ flooded basements.
While calls to the OFD died down considerably after the rains subsided, the OFD responded to a flood in a Weidner Avenue home after it shifted and a water pipe broke. ³The house literally shifted on its foundation and the water pipe burst,² Biscay said, ³so we were still kind of busy on Saturday, responding to calls.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
