SUMMIT COUNTY, Ohio — Residents are knee deep in cleanup after severe flooding in Summit County. It's been 11 days since that massive rainfall -- and in some areas, levels are still not back to normal.
Those living near Luna Lake say they’re furious -- and not because of all the damage. But because they believe the epic flooding could have been avoided. Residents asked for help weeks ago from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, worried about water levels, and they were told no.
Scott Rader, who’s lived on Luna Lake for 25 years, and who needed to hire workers from Craig’s List to help remove all the belongings from his home that were destroyed, said "Nobody gave us any warning that this was going to be catastrophic versus our usual flooding. At least tell us. Give us a chance to save some things."
He said the water came rushing in like a tidal wave and continued to rise eight inches an hour. He acknowledged there was heavy rainfall in the area, and that they have had minor flooding over the years, but said, "We've had a lot of rain up North before and this flood was probably four feet higher than it's ever been."
FEMA hasn’t designated this area as a flood plain. But in the minutes taken at a council meeting last month in the Village of Clinton, officials asked the Department of Natural Resources that if they knew a storm was coming, could they drop the water levels in Portage Lakes by 6 inches to help reduce the chance of flooding.
They were told no, because Portage Lakes, which is surrounded by million dollar homes, was not for flood control. Officials from ODNR said that if someone breaks a part of their boat in the Lakes, they come after us because it's a designated “pleasure lake."
Dan Czartoszewski, who’s been coming to Luna Lake his whole life and owns four homes there thought that was very telling.
"So fishing and recreational boating is more important than people's homes?" he asked.
He checked on his properties immediately after the flooding, and in one home he had to gut the whole place; ripping out handmade cherry cabinets and paneling worth tens of thousands of dollars. Contents of the house littered the front lawn.
"You gotta beat the mold. If you beat the mold you can save your house," he explained
A room which had brand new cedar paneling, is now decorated with a shop vac and industrial fan to dry up the water and keep the humidity down.
He says he'll be fine, but it's the older residents he's worried about. Like the woman who lives next door. She moved in just eight months ago after her children spent a year remodeling the home as a summer house for her.
"They did so much work for their mother, now their mother had to head back to Florida," he told us.
Down the road lived another senior, George Martin. He was lucky. He'll only have to shell out about $10,000 to fix his damage. And he's grateful for the way this tight knit neighborhood had everyone’s backs.
"We've had people from the lake, people from the community, coming around saying how can we help?" he told us.
But most of the residents we spoke with say something here stinks...and it's not the floodwaters.
Rader wants someone to look into what happened saying, "We never had anything like this. Not even close."
I spoke with ODNR which says it did lower the water in the North Reservoir of the Lakes by six inches two days before the storm.
They say they've been handling water levels that way for 70 years.
But if that's the case, why was the village of Clinton told the state wasn’t going to do that?