Business owners dealing with significant flooding damage say they are disappointed that pre-positioned city trucks intended to act as vacuums didn’t keep them dry.
Heavy rain overwhelmed parts of Melrose Avenue on Monday, flooding several businesses in the Fairfax District and leaving store owners with significant damage. Now, business owners say they are disappointed that city equipment pre-positioned in the area didn’t keep them dry.
As water quickly rose along the well-known shopping corridor late in the morning, store owners said their shops filled up within minutes.
“I saw the water was coming up, and then it didn’t take long, maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and our whole store was full of water,” said Yaffa, the owner of Posers Hollywood.
Large blue city trucks pre-positioned in the area were intended to act as vacuums to clear standing water along the floodprone stretch of Melrose.
Domenic DeLuca, the owner of Brooklyn Projects, said he watched the water creep past the sidewalk and into his store.
“First started going over the sidewalk, and I’m thinking, ‘Well, the trucks are here, so we’re going to be good.’ But that didn’t work,” DeLuca said. “The water started coming up, and then eventually it started really coming up — and then the whole store was underwater from front to back, like 4 to 5 inches of water.”
With water rising into his store while he stared at the trucks through his rain-soaked surveillance cameras, DeLuca said he was furious.
“I’m looking at my camera, there was nobody here,” he said. “We ran out like, ‘Is this guy not seeing what’s going on?’ Nobody in this one, nobody in this one, nobody around.”
Cellphone video later showed a crew opening a manhole cover, allowing water to swirl and drain within seconds. But by that point, the damage had already spread through multiple shops.