Area flooding leaves a mess for crews to cleanup

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Heavy rain on Saturday led to flooding across Rochester and the Finger Lakes. Cleanup was underway before nightfall.

In Perinton, crews used a front-end loader to clear out debris and water from Railroad Mills Road. In Greece, backyards were consumed by massive puddles. And on Honeoye Lake in the town of Canadice, crews were dealing with water damage hours after the worst of it ended.

Norm Schrader lives feet from the lakeshore, and he says it’s been years since he’s seen flooding this bad.

"The last time it rained this hard down here was in 2014, and it actually wiped out route 20A, it wiped out all these culverts here," said Schrader.

Around 3 p.m. Saturday, Schrader’s driveway looked like a river – it was completely covered with rushing brown water.

"It was pouring down like crazy, all of a sudden you could hear the rush and I was looking out the window and there was quite a bit of mud and rock flowing right down our driveway," said Schrader.

A few hours later and the water was mostly gone, but his driveway was covered with rocks and debris. He says the culvert drainage system in his neighborhood was no match for the fierce floods.

"In the type of rain we had, there’s a lot of erosion and it plugs up the little pipe that goes under the road so the water’s got no place to go but over,” said Schrader. “Then it just pours down through with mud and everything else."

Schrader was relatively lucky – his home didn’t have too much damage other than some minor flooding in a crawl space beneath his house. His next-door neighbor, on the other hand, had 16 inches of water in the basement.

If your home has been prone to flooding in the past, it’s not a bad idea to check your basement just to make sure everything is dry.