Residents told to evacuate

Late Monday night, Patton Borough officials sent out an automated warning to borough residents’ phones.

“Ground immediately, this is Patton Borough. The Chest Creek dam is in jeopardy of breaking. If able, please evacuate. Get to higher ground immediately,” the message said.

PATTON — Some borough residents came home Monday afternoon to find their basements flooded with water from Little Chest Creek.

Among those residents was Patton Borough Council President Don Kirk, who lives along Magee Avenue. Part of Kirk’s backyard was covered. He said he wouldn’t have made it home without a ride from Patton firefighters.

“When I came home at 2 o’clock, it was about up to the first level back by the creek. I looked at my rain gauge, and we already had 3 inches of rain,” Kirk said.

“It just came too fast. Now we gotta put up with all this (debris, and) it smells like sewage. I was talking with (Patton Borough Street Commissioner) Fred Price when the fire company dropped me off. He saw a riding lawnmower come down, wobbling down through; it’s terrible.”

Kirk said he’s never seen flooding as bad in the 34 years that he has lived along Magee Avenue. He said his neighbor’s basement was flooded and that the water had pushed a metal bench out of his neighbor’s yard.

“The poor guy’s woodpile up there, I think we all have a chunk of it down through here. But if we get hammered again, we’re done,” Kirk said, adding that it’ll take a couple of days before his yard’s appearance returns to normal. “They’re calling for rain for the rest of the week. If it does this again, we’re sunk. There’s no sense in cleaning anything up.”

But many residents started to clean up on Monday, including Bill Ropp, who said his kitchen was flooded with more than 50 gallons of water.

“We have no basement. We are located on two cement slabs, one higher than the other. So, when it rains like it did today, it’ll go onto the first cement slab onto our house, and it goes onto the second cement slab, which goes from underneath our living room and into our kitchen,” Ropp said. “I shot back 50 gallons of water out of our kitchen today, with help of a friend of mine — my neighbor. It was just a pretty devastating day for everyone here in Patton. I just hope that everyone can make their way through this.”

Andrew Christoff, 15, said he was home to see the water rise over the bridge and onto Magee Avenue, where he lives.

“Well, I was talking to my dad, and I showed him the video clip of the water coming over the bridge — and that was before the street flooded — then I went in my basement and started shoveling water out. I come up the stairs, and it was just starting to come down the road, terribly. It was very scary.”

Travis Hilyer, who owns Hilyer’s Hardware along Magee Avenue, had to clean water out his business’ aisles.

“You couldn’t get into the business (until) after about 3 o’clock,” Hilyer said. “It was probably about 2 to 3 inches inside the whole store.”

Cambria County Depart­ment of Emergency Services Deputy Director Art Martynuska spoke with Hilyer to start his report.

“I came out to assess the damage and see what’s going on with the floodwaters. We’ve been hit pretty hard in the northern part of the county,” he said.

Patton Volunteer Fire Company Public Information Officer Jerry Brant said the flooding was the worst he has seen “probably within 25 years or so.”

“I think back in 1996, there was some pretty heavy flooding. But this certainly rivals that, if not more,” he said. “We were originally called for a lightning strike on Ashcroft Road, where lightning had hit a residence. Then, while we were on that call, we started to get a number of calls for flooded basements (and) flooded roadways. We were able, thank goodness, to (have) the manpower that we have, to take care of these calls.”