Hamilton residents call for city's help as intersection continues to flood, damaging homes and cars

HAMILTON, Ohio — “When I know it’s going to rain, I freak out.”

People who live near the intersection of Madison and Symmes Avenue in Hamilton are no strangers to seeing that intersection flood, but for the first time, it flooded twice hours apart early Monday morning.

“I’ve lived here for 30 plus years and when it rains that hard it’s a guarantee that’s going to happen,” said Todd Sarosy.

Sarosy, who lives at the corner of Madison and Symmes, said the intersection floods at least once a year.

“If I’m home and I know it’s raining like crazy I’ll sit here and watch this second manhole cover over here and water starts slowly ponding up on the street, but I know I’m in trouble whenever that manhole cover starts spitting out about a foot out of the hole,” he said. “When it starts burping out water, I know I’ve got about 20 minutes to start moving my cars.”

After he moves cars, he stands in the street.

“I literally have to prevent people from driving through here and stop them physically or they’ll ... if the water is high enough it’ll come in and flood my house and I got to try and protect my belongings the best I can,” he said.

Dana Bankember, Sarosy's neighbor for decades, said he watches him stand in the street each time it floods.

“I’ve seen Todd’s basement. It floods a lot. Every time it floods the street, his basement floods,” Bankember said. “He’s pulling sewer lids up trying to get more air in to see if it helps get the water out any quicker because once it stops raining it goes down there pretty quick."

Bankember said he tries to help when he can.

“We’ll put cars out there and every now and again we’ll get out, but there’s people out there yelling at us and honk because they want to go by and the only thing is, they’re not realizing they’re making them waves and it just floods out people’s basements,” Bankember said.

Bankember said he’s lucky because he doesn’t live on the corner because neighbors who live on the corner like Sarosy get hit the worst by the flood water. Sarosy said he has tried contacting the city to help fix this issue.

“It’s frustrating because when it happens you call the people in charge and nothing ever gets done,” Sarosy said.

Sarosy added a street and sewer maintenance supervisor did come and look at the sewers in the area and planned to return Tuesday to take a closer look at them.

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