After widespread flooding around Northern Nevada Sunday, you can still find pockets of water scattered around neighborhoods, while residents work to clean up the mess left behind.
Sagittarius Drive in Reno turned into a river on Sunday night. On Monday, crews were hard at work, digging the muck out of the road.
It's a scene repeated all around the region, following heavy rainfall and runoff that proved too much for northern Nevada's desert storm drains.
"It all just ran. It just ran wild," Reno resident Whitney Weed said of her waterlogged backyard. A creek behind her house quickly swelled over its banks, joining with two nearby ponds. She is thankful it left her home dry.
The flooding was hit or miss, depending on the area. While some neighborhoods showed no sign of Sunday night's flooding, drying out by the morning, others were not so lucky.
Parts of Hidden Valley are still submerged. Homes and yards are under several feet of water near Pebble Beach Road, while residents just wait for it to recede.
"I have seen food go by, I've seen gas cans, different things," Hidden Valley resident Carole Billau said of the floodwaters outside her home. "And you know, that's hazardous materials. And how long we'll be with the water, I don't know."
Billau's neighborhood is one of the hardest hit, but she says they're no strangers to flooding.
"Not my first rodeo," Billau said. "Been here for four of them."
Still, it's a muddy mess. They know they're in for a long cleanup, and they're not alone. Companies that handle flood damage repair said they were inundated with calls Monday. SERVPRO in Reno stacked up 120 appointments in one day.
"Our crews have been working since Sunday morning," SERVPRO Sales and Marketing Manager Rick Malone said."If you have water in your crawl space, it could impact your foundation itself, can cause damage to that. It can also create wood rot."
Malone said oftentimes homeowners don't realize they have water leaks under their homes. Now is a good time to check basements and crawlspaces to make sure. If you find water, he said to pump it out and remove any vapor barrier so the ground can dry. If your carpet got wet, that has to go, since floodwater is considered "severely contaminated." Water left under homes can also turn to toxic mold.
