Appleton storm leaves homes damaged and residents questioning city’s infrastructure

APPLETON (WLUK) – Some residents on Appleton’s northside are looking for answers after more than a dozen homes sustained significant damage during Friday’s storm. Not only are they dealing with storm runoff, but several homes also had sewage backups.

Driveways along North Viola Street on Appleton’s northside are littered with dumpsters, full of memories and personal possessions, destroyed by Friday’s flash flooding. Several disaster recovery and restoration crews are working to help residents clean up their messes too.

When asked if she’s ever seen such extensive damage, caused by one storm in one neighborhood before, Leslie Bradley from JG Restoration said, “No, absolutely not. Especially this street, kind of where everything just hit every house, every house, the whole street, up and down, no!”

Dave Moscinski has lived on N. Viola for 50 years. He ended up with four feet of water in his basement, not the first time he said this street was overcome by storm water.

According to Moscinski, “We have had it twice in the last 30 year, primarily due to storm sewer and downflow from Northland Ave. coming in.”

Moscinski and others believing the city’s infrastructure is what sent water rushing down their streets and backyards on Friday.

One residents said the water was moving so fast, it caused her home’s foundation to wash away – sending mud and debris into the basement. Others questioning why their street was hit so hard.

“The city was out here very discreetly, the mayor was out here not talking to anybody but making sure they got their sewer, storm sewer unclogged. As soon as they got that unclogged, within 30 minutes of that, all the water was gone. Being the only street in the area that had the issue, I can’t imagine that was an act of God that seems more like an act of negligence,” said Joseph Scheiwe.

Appleton Mayor Jake Woodford tells FOX 11 he sympathizes with the impacted residents, but believes what happened out here was nothing more than the worst of Mother Nature.

He said, “We did not have any indication of a breech of that system or blockage of that system that would have caused an event like this to happen. We have not found any evidence of that. They underlying cause is receiving an extraordinary amount of rain in a narrow band of the city in a very brief period of time.”

But it’s not just storm water damage people were dealing with, several homes on this block had basements full of sewage.

Bjorn Olson said what started as rain water coming in his basement became so much worse.

“It was slow and steady and it was clear and then the toilet just exploded and then it just, like I said, the flood gates opened and within a matter of minutes we had 17 inches,” said Olson”

It’s unclear what caused the sewage backup, but residents said they saw city workers removing manhole covers from the street and immediately afterwards sewage started backing up into some homes.

Mayor Woodford doesn’t agree. He said, “Standard practice for our DPW is to either replace manhole covers that have been blown off or to open storm sewer manholes if it will aid in the draining of water, that is the standard practice.”

The mayor said he didn’t know what specific manhole covers were removed from Viola Street on Friday, but didn’t believe the wrong manhole cover was removed by mistake, adding, “They know the difference between the covers, they work with the system every day.”

While the City doesn’t have a disaster relief fund, the mayor said he’ll be making a request to the state for local aid to help those impacted by the storm.