Residents survey flooding on Villa Drive in Kinston. Photo Courtesy of Matthew Young / Facebook

Monday afternoon proved that it doesn’t take a hurricane to cause flooding problems in Kinston.

What seemed to be no more than a typical summer afternoon thunderstorm turned into a flash-flooding nightmare in many areas of Kinston. The storm dumped up to three inches of rain on parts of Lenoir County during less than an hour, according to meteorologist David Sawyer. 

Impacts were immediate in many neighborhoods, with flash-flooding along the Adkin Branch damaging vehicles and residences on Doctors Drive, roadway flooding in the Hardee Heights neighborhood, and flooded garages on Villa Drive off Rouse Road, as well as other parts of the city.

In addition, Kinston Department of Fire and Rescue Chief Damien Locklear said the KDFR responded to numerous calls for assistance from stranded motorists whose vehicles stalled on flooded streets in the northwest part of the city.

“We were getting calls back to back,” Locklear said.

Locklear said he would like to remind citizens to avoid driving into flooded roadways, and follow the mantra “turn around, don’t drown.”

The KDFR also checked on residents on the section of Stallings Drive along the Yadkin Branch, warning of the rising water and offering assistance. Locklear said KDFR personnel assisted one elderly couple in evacuating from their home, using a boat to navigate the floodwaters.

City Manager Tony Sears said that while Monday’s flooding was significant, it was not completely out of the ordinary for Kinston. Sears said that, while flooding from hurricanes gets the most attention, some of the worst flooding events in Kinston’s history have come from non-tropical rain events, such as the storm on Monday.

“The hurricane obviously caused downed limbs...things in the gutters, and there is no doubt that played a part of the problem…however, that was not the main issue,” Sears said. “We got more rain [Monday] in a very short amount of time than we did during the recent hurricane.”

City of Kinston Public Services Director Rhonda Barwick also pointed to the amount of water Kinston received on Monday, but she acknowledged that there could be some issues with the storm drain system.

“Could there be small clogs in the storm drain from debris? There could be, and we are out there looking, but the biggest thing that happened yesterday is the volume and the speed at which it came down. Our storm drains were inundated with water,” Barwick said. 

Matthew Young, who lives on Villa Drive, said he is very frustrated with the city and its failure to clean up storm debris in a timely manner. 

“There was debris down everywhere, and no one from the city came to clean it up. It was in the roadways, it was in the gutters, it was in the ditches, and when the storm came yesterday, the water had nowhere to go,” Young said. 

Young said he received a text from a neighbor, and looked outside, and water was at his door. He and several neighbors worked in knee-deep water as rain continued to fall to clear debris from storm drains and pull up a manhole cover to allow the street to begin draining.  

“I’m upset with the city of Kinston, that they knew it’s hurricane season, they know we just got one, they know this neighborhood floods, and they didn’t send anybody around to clean up debris from the storm, and what that cost us was flooding in everybody’s garage in this neighborhood. I’ve lost priceless memories because they didn’t come out and clear storm drains,” Young said.