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Three Sunset Drive area residents complained Monday night to the Warsaw Common Council about the flooding.
Kathy Patterson said, “As you know we had a bad flood. We had a bad rain. The water started getting higher, my neighbor across the street, where the railroad is, it starts to flood. He called the number that we’re supposed to call and he was told you have to come out and make your own sandbag and you have to take it home yourself.”
In the past, she said, referencing her neighbor who has lived in her home for 31 years, the city has “always” watched the water and “always” delivered the sandbags.
“This year, that did not happen,” she said. “... And people don’t know what to do. No one knew what to do.”
Kathy got in contact with District 5 Councilwoman Diane Quance, who represents the area, and left a message. She said Quance didn’t know what to do and she had to check but didn’t think it was that bad.
“The thing is, is that if you guys aren’t in where we are, you can’t see what is going on. But because they waited so long, and they said no one requested sandbags - we never had to in the past, the city has always brought them in,” Kathy stated. “So now, my neighbors, when they finally brought it Saturday at 5 o’clock, my neighbors across the street have it the worst. The people in the white house, right by the dam, right by the bridge, they have no heat now because the water is so bad it’s gone into their duct work, kicked out their furnace. Their whole house is totally surrounded by water.”
Kathy said she can’t drive her car because the water is over 12 inches deep.
“I don’t know what needs to be done, but something’s not right here. There needs to be a policy or something that everybody knows,” she stated.
On April 1, the water started coming up, she said, “and up and up and up and nothing was delivered until April 4 when it was way up, and by then it’s too late. Those two houses are totally surrounded by water.”
She said she didn’t know what the council needs to do or if the Indiana Department of Natural Resources needs to get involved, but “something has to be done because that’s just not right.”
Jerry Patterson said there’s a lot of older people along Sunset Drive, too, who can’t put out sandbags. Kathy said an 87-year-old woman got her sandbags Monday but it was too late.
“It used to be, if I’m correct, inmates used to come and put sandbags around. The fire department would come and put sandbags around,” Kathy said.
She said Jerry talked to Public Works Director Dustin Dillon Monday and Dillon told him there are groups a person can call who will volunteer to help with sandbags.
“Why didn’t we know that? Why doesn’t anybody know about that? I mean, I’m really upset. My house is dry, but their houses are bad, and people should know. Who takes care of the water alert? Hmm? Who takes care of the water alert? That thing that’s by the dam that keeps track of the water. There’s a thing on here that somebody should have been hooked up to the water alert so that we knew. So the bags would come out,” Kathy continued, saying she didn’t know what the council was going to do about it.
Jerry encouraged all the council members to drive over there and take a look at the flooding because it’s bad.
Council President Jack Wilhite sympathized with the residents, mentioning he lived on Sunset many years ago and experienced flooding down there as well. He took their comments under advisement and said he would pass them on to Mayor Jeff Grose, who was absent from Monday’s meeting. Jerry said he’d appreciate it.
After the meeting, Quance said, “The city made significant improvements to the bridge area on Sunset, installing a backflow valve that can prevent this kind of thing from happening regularly, in 2019. And since that time, we’ve not had this happen, but we also have not had 6 inches of rain fall in such a short amount of time. And because the Tippecanoe River only drops 18 inches between here and Lake Shafer, when that gets full, all the way down and the water starts coming back up, and there’s not a lot that anyone can do to control what the river does.”
She said they regret the fact the problem happened on a holiday (Easter) weekend when the city offices weren’t open on Friday (Good Friday) and “it was not monitored the way it would have normally been during that time. As soon as we became aware of the problem, then we’ve been checking on that area every few hours and offering solutions as best as we can in the situation.”
The river has crested at this point, Quance stated, and “we are looking forward to helping those residents effected clean up and deal with the issues that happened, but the city can’t control what Mother Nature does.’
