ATLANTA — Road crews are stepping up efforts to clear drains after flash flooding held up drivers for almost an hour on the downtown connector Sunday afternoon.
A spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Transportation said Sunday’s flooding was worst case scenario. She says wind blew around debris and then several inches of rain inundated the area, washing everything into blocked storm grates on the connector.
GDOT said HERO workers also found more litter than usual blocking the drains.
“Anything we throw out of our windows, any signs that could be blown away, where they are going during a storm system like this is the low point and they can cover drains very quickly,” said Natalie Dale, with GDOT.
The rain pooled on the connector and trapped drivers in both directions. GDOT says they are now working on a plan for this week to keep the drains cleared every day.
“Get out in advance of the storm and then behind the storms, because we do have significant storm systems coming in,” Dale said.
The city is also working to figure out what caused an apartment complex to flood in midtown.
The Department of Watershed Management plans to send engineers to the area to see how the runoff water converges on this apartment complex or if the storm sewer pipes need to be replaced.
The apartment parking deck at North Avenue and Central Park Place was under five feet of water Sunday afternoon, damaging several cars.
Throughout the day on Monday tow trucks hauled off the water-logged cars from the parking deck.
“(It) happened really, really quickly. Never had time to think no second thought," said Jrani Mandagria, who lives in the complex.
Mandagria said the storm water rushed in through the walls, quickly rising to about 2 feet and leaving many of his belongings floating.
The low lying complex has flooded numerous times over the years. The new property owner told Channel 2’s Tom Regan that he blames the problem on storm pipes that are too narrow to siphon the enormous runoff from heavy rain.
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“As a result, we had manholes being blown off on our property, geysers of water coming up,” said Woody Rupp, with Vista Realty Partners. “A solution needs to be found because this has been going on for years and it needs to stop."
The water department says storm drains are getting clogged with landscape debris and trash, so the storm pipes aren't the only problem.
“The next time it rains, we will have an engineering crew that will be here monitoring how the water flows,” said Lillian Govus with watershed management. “We are going to work with them to see how we can fix it.”
The apartment property owner says they’ve spent about a quarter of a million dollars to address runoff issues. They say this is clearly an infrastructure problem and it's time for the city to get more committed to solving it.