BRIDGEVILLE, Pa. — Residents were evacuated from roughly 20 homes in Bridgeville, as Hurricane Ida pummeled the borough, prompting the mayor to declare a Disaster Emergency.
“My daughter was getting ready for school and the firefighter was knocking on every house,” said resident Maria Rodriguez.
She and her family evacuated safely and went to stay with loved ones elsewhere. They returned to their home on Baldwin Street later Wednesday morning, and found several feet of water in their basement.
Firefighters were busy pumping it out when Channel 11 arrived.
Across the street, neighbor Lin St. Clair also faced several feet of water in his basement.
“It’s pretty significant, but if it doesn’t make it to the first floor, we kind of breathe a sigh of relief,” he said.
St. Clair blames the repeated flooding on a nearby bridge over Bower Hill Road, which has “a center pier that catches debris and then causes the water to back up the street.”
State Senator Devlin Robinson was out surveying the hurricane’s impact on Wednesday morning. He told us the main issue is water volume.
“We actually implemented a three-stage solution and we’re in the second stage right now and entering into the third stage,” he said. “We’ve lowered the baseball field at McLaughlin Park six feet, we implemented a trash rack to take all the debris that was coming down McLaughlin Run, and we’re trying to mitigate all the volume of water that we get and it’s going to be a long, hard process.”
McLaughlin Run Road was blocked off early Wednesday, as debris washed up from the overflowing creek. Another stretch of road also faced a landslide.
“The governor declared a state of emergency so we’re going to work with the federal government, the state government to see how we can help these businesses and these residents recover from this,” Robinson said.
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