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Four town-owned buildings sustained flood damage during the July 21 storm that dropped roughly four-and-a-half inches of rain in approximately 35 minutes on New Canaan, with Waveny House suffering what one town official called the worst basement flooding ever recorded there.
“This is the worst that we’ve ever seen it where it flooded the whole basement,” Buildings Superintendent Bill Oestmann told the Board of Selectmen at its regular meeting Aug. 4 at Town Hall. “We got it all cleaned up and dry.”
Oestmann said the town is now using the cleanup as an opportunity to address the basement more comprehensively.
“We’re cleaning that whole basement out once and for all finally,” he said. “It’s just time to clean that whole basement. There’s just stuff there that just doesn’t need to be there anymore, and once we get it all cleaned out we’ll work on our plan to control any kind of future water problems that may be coming in.”
Oestmann noted that water incursion in the Waveny House basement has been an ongoing issue over the years, with the town having corrected some drainage problems in recent years, though last month’s storm overwhelmed those improvements.
The Highway Department was also hit hard, Oestmann said. There, rainwater came off the roof so quickly it breached the curb on one of the air conditioning units, running down the ductwork and into the electrical room.
“We have to rip down all the insulation, check all the ductwork, make sure nothing bad’s going on there and clean it all up and then reinsulate everything,” Oestmann said. He added that the town would also address the curb on the affected unit to prevent a recurrence.
“We’ve been there 26 years and it’s never happened,” he said.
The New Canaan Nature Center’s education building also took on water through its walls, Oestmann said, with gutters overflowing and the old drainage system around the property unable to keep up with the volume of rain. The damage there was relatively contained, with only a small section of wall in a storage room needing to be removed, and Oestmann said that building should be back in order before the school year begins.
Lapham Center also sustained damage, including to the ceiling and kitchen area.
Oestmann said the town’s insurance adjuster has allowed all four buildings to be bundled into a single claim.
“He allowed us to aggregate the claim to all the buildings and everything into one claim,” Oestmann said.
First Selectman Dionna Carlson asked about the damage to the ceiling and kitchen at Lapham.
“That’s all in the claim,” Oestmann said.
At Waveny House, Oestmann said the contractor believes the gutters, which follow the original historic design of the building, simply could not handle the volume of rain.
“When you’re talking three inches per hour, it’s just too much for them to handle,” he said. “None of the downspouts could handle all the water.”
Oestmann said he is looking into adding a gutter overflow system to the building, which would relieve pressure on the existing gutters and leaders. The project would require coordination with historic preservation officials, since Waveny House is a protected structure, but Oestmann said the practicality of protecting the building from water damage has to be part of the conversation.
“It is an interesting dilemma,” he said. “You can have a historic building, but if you can’t protect it from water, you will not have that building. There has to be some practicality.”
He added that the frequency of severe storms has changed the calculus.
“It’s nice to call it a 200-year storm, but we’re seeing 200-year storms come all the time now,” Oestmann said. “Times have changed a little bit and we recognize that. We’re very cognizant of that and we’re trying to figure out what’s the best way forward.”
At Lapham, floodwater poured through the windows after two 12-inch catch basins behind the building could not handle the volume of runoff coming off the roof.
“When you think about the mass size of that roof, how much water was coming down, it just couldn’t handle it,” Oestmann said. “It’s only six-inch pipe in there and it just couldn’t handle it.”
The damage at Lapham was significant. Walls were cut, insulation pulled out and carpets ripped up. Oestmann said the crew arrived within two hours and worked through the night. He said he is currently working with 24 Restore and the insurance adjuster to determine what is salvageable, including pool tables and furniture in the lower level.
“I want to make sure that where we settle this thing here a year from now after settlement we don’t have a problem that the pool tables are all warped,” he said.
Oestmann said the goal is to have Lapham back together and fully usable by Oct. 1, when the center begins to get busy again, though he cautioned it remains a target rather than a firm date while contractors are still being lined up and carpet lead times remain uncertain.
The town has a $50,000 deductible on its flood insurance policy. Oestmann said bundling all four buildings into one claim, rather than treating each separately, helps the town get more out of the policy.
Oestmann credited 24 Restore, the remediation company the town called, with responding within two hours of the flooding and deploying three crews and around 50 pieces of equipment to begin drying out the buildings immediately.
“By responding within a two-hour window like that after that much water, it saved us a lot of money,” he said. “They were able to start the immediate remediation right then and there, stop the water from wicking up by vacuuming out. They had Lapham cleaned up by four o’clock in the morning.”
The Powerhouse Theatre in Waveny also came through with only minimal water intrusion, Oestmann said.
“The theater just had a tiny bit of water in it, maybe three or four gallons,” he said. “I’ve been down there before when there was two or three feet of water, so I was very happy with that.”
The flooding also caused washouts on trails at Waveny Park, the Bristow Bird Sanctuary and Kiwanis Park. Those repairs are not covered by insurance, Oestmann said, and the town plans to put the trail work out to formal bid, with a target of having it before the Board of Selectmen at the first September meeting.