Hyde Park residents, business owners recovering after floodwaters take over neighborhood

CINCINNATI —

Numerous family cars were towed on Saturday while home basement walls got torn out after floodwaters took over Hyde Park.

One father says that he even needed to pull his son out of their stalled car and carry him to safety.

“I mean this entire area was just a river,” Max Czernin said while standing next to his son and daughter outside of their home. “It’s scary for them, and honestly for us, when you look at the water and it’s coming up your steps.”

Families living on Arcadia Place saw their neighborhood overwhelmed by water. Sam McLaughlin was trying to make it home when his car stalled.

“I had my three-year-old son in the back. I had to get out, get him, walk around, and pull him out of the water,” McLaughlin said. “The water was about up to my waist by the time I got out. It was really tough to open the doors.”

Four inches of rain hit Hyde Park Saturday, becoming much worse than the rainfall totals seen almost anywhere else in Greater Cincinnati.

Living in Hyde Park, the Czernin family says that they have experienced three floods in eight years.

“It’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Somebody needs to figure out a solution because the footage is crazy and just a lot of people are getting hurt, and at some point, someone’s really going to get hurt,” Czernin said.

Close by on Edwards Road near Hyde Park Square, videos showed eerie moments inside Neko Sushi during the flood. In less than an hour, the water was up to owner Yeon Kim’s waist.

“Very anxious and frustrated,” Kim described herself as feeling with having to deal with yet another flood inside of her restaurant.

She says that, almost every year for the last eight years, heavy rain has damaged her business. She wants to stay in Hyde Park but isn’t sure that she can afford to.

“If it keeps happening, how can I support — how can I run the business?” Kim asked.

The clean-up efforts on Saturday were an all-day affair for Hyde Park residents. Crews power-washed sewage water out of sidewalks. And contractors were called in to rip out basement drywall before mold grows inside of it.

“For where we’re located, it seems pretty extreme, even with getting four inches of rain, right? It just doesn’t make sense. So somebody’s got to figure it out,” Czernin said.