Damien McFadden was sound asleep in his West Allis home near South 81st Street and West National Avenue in the early morning hours last Sunday when he was awakened by a panicked phone call from a close friend and neighbor as, unbeknownst to McFadden, flood waters raged through the streets of his working-class neighborhood.
“I was dead asleep and I woke up to my friend screaming to come save him so he and his family didn’t drown in his truck,” McFadden said on Friday, as cleanup efforts in West Allis and other parts of the Milwaukee area continued from damage caused by record-breaking rainfall and flash flooding. “My friend Mitchell ran out into his truck with his whole family and they were driving and got caught in the flood.”
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McFadden rushed from the home where’s he’s lived for more than 30 years and found his friend and family inside their truck, which had finally come to rest in the middle of the street after floating through the rising waters.
McFadden took quick action when he noticed that the truck was becoming filled with water.
“I had to break his window and get him and his family out while I was chest deep in water and I’m not a small guy. I’m 6-feet tall,” McFadden said, recounting the terrifying moments. “Right when I grabbed his daughter, a trash can floated by me and took me by the hip and almost took me in the current with it.”
Flood waters from Honey Creek and the Root River overtook storm drains and wreaked havoc on McFadden’s neighborhood, collapsing the foundations of some homes and severely flooding basements with feet of water.
McFadden lives in a nearly century-old house that sits slightly higher than the homes of most of his neighbors and became a refuge for the neighborhood. Sixteen people crowded into McFadden’s home seeking safety as the relentless storm continued.
His home wasn’t spared, however. Water poured into his basement until nearly reaching the first floor.
“It got the whole basement. I had to get rid of everything,” McFadden said. “I had to strip all the walls, the drywall and ceilings. I just got done doing a deep cleanse of it with bleach.
McFadden also lost two cars in the flood, but his truck was spared. “The only thing still running is my truck, which I’m very thankful for,” he said.
As sun shined on the neighborhood on Friday, many of McFadden’s neighbors continued to pile damaged and destroyed belongings along the curb. Industrial-size Dumpsters were delivered to the area to assist in the cleanup.
McFadden, exhausted from five days of cleaning his house and removing damaged items, took Friday off to rest and regroup.
“You can’t really do much about it. I can be mad but what’s that going to do,” he said. “I’ve just got to clean my house. For the past few days all I’ve been doing is cleaning my house. I had to gut my basement and clean it. I’m just taking a day off today and then I’ve got to go to work on my garage. My body is physically exhausted. I’ve been doing this by myself.”
Much to McFadden’s dismay, insurance isn’t covering any of the damage to his house. “I’m taking a loss on everything,” he said.
The area has experienced some flooding in the past and was especially hard hit in 2008, but nothing compared to what happened over the weekend. “This one was just horrible,” he said.
McFadden urged people to consider helping with the cleanup in the neighborhood. Cleaning suppliers are especially needed.
“If you can help anybody, I’m sure people need it,” he said. “We’re just trying to all stick together.”
As of Thursday, the city of West Allis had collected more than 300 tons of flood-damaged materials.
“Cleanup and recovery efforts are still underway. The impact in our community is significant,” a posting on the city’s website states. “Reports indicate varying levels of damage, from minimal to significant, with at least 11 homes experiencing collapsed foundations.”
Severe flooding left Gigi Peterson trapped in her house along West National Avenue in New Berlin.
Water essentially created a lake on her property, sparing her house but destroying the contents of two pole barns on the property, including four cars, a motorcycle and an extensive collection of her husband’s tools that he uses as part of his building contracting business.
“We have a driveway that kind of goes down into a soup bowl and our old cape cod house sits in the back of the property,” Peterson said.
Without a garage on the property, the barns were used for storage, she said. “Everything was destroyed in those two barns because of the flooding,” Peterson said. “It was feet of water.”
At first, Peterson wasn’t aware of the troubling situation developing on her property.
“The house sits so far back and the storm came so quickly I had a hard time seeing if it was blowing across the grass or if it was becoming a lake in my front yard. It turned out that it was a lake in my front yard,” said Peterson, who has lived in the house since 2006.
“I was scared. I knew I had a big problem on my hands.”
After an earlier flood more than a decade ago, the Petersons took steps to reduce flooding risk to the home, including installing drainage tiles.
“We tried to fix the water problem, but nobody was expecting what we got on Saturday. We did have water in the basement, but it was very little and very manageable,” she said.
Peterson said worry set in when she realized that she had no way to safely get off of her property.
“I couldn’t get out to the road. All of my cars were submerged in the barn and if I had to get out I would have had to wade through waist-deep water,” she said. “I was fearful at first. We’ve seen horrific things recently, like in North Carolina and other parts of the United States. I did think for a while that things were going to start lifting off the ground and floating away.”
With more rain in the forecast this weekend, Peterson is feeling a bit uneasy.
“You’re trying to navigate your own situation at the moment. We’re still trying to recover,” she said. “I think people are little skittish and panicky.”
