NEW ORLEANS — More than a dozen businesses on historic Oak Street dealt with flooding during Thursday’s burst of heavy rain. Many owners say the street used to stay dry but is now flooded during nearly every storm, and that the problem seems to be getting worse.
D.C. Harbold, owner of More Fun Comics, sent WWL Louisiana cell phone video of water lapping against the door of his store Thursday. He ended up getting several inches of water inside the building.
“Lots of boxes of comics got wet, some things I couldn’t get off the ground in time,” he said, “I had to throw away a couple thousand dollars worth of inventory.”
Harbold opened the shop in 1991. For two decades, he said, there was rarely any street flooding, even during Hurricane Katrina. Then, it steadily became a regular occurrence. Harbold, and other longtime business owners on Oak, partly blame a road improvement project that began around that time. He pointed out that the newest layer of asphalt has choked some of the drains on and off the street, leaving little room for water to drain.
In the past few years, it has begun happening even more frequently. “We’re going to get rain, some flooding is going to occur, it’s the city we live in, but it’s becoming a monthly event as opposed to a yearly event,” said Harbold.
WWL Louisiana polled about 20 businesses on Oak Street. Almost every single one reported flooding inside their building on Thursday. That included longtime coffee standby Rue De La Course, which is housed in a century-old building, and many of the street’s newcomers.
“We lost over three-quarters of a day of business,” said Kevin Greenaae, a managing partner of Oak Street Brewery. It opened about four years ago, and in the beginning, Greenaae said water never got high enough to come inside the building. It happened for the first time toward the end of last year, then again Thursday.
He and other business owners and employees barricaded the street with benches, cars, and caution tape to keep cars from pushing water farther into the buildings. “We got people blowing through at 30,40 miles an hour, and it was just wreaking havoc,” he said.
The flooding also came in the middle of an event designed to bring more people to Oak Street during the summer slow season. “Get to Know Oak Street Bingo” began on Wednesday and was supposed to end on Thursday.
Patrons can get a bingo card from a business on Oak Street then take it to others and receive stamps, with prizes for winners. It was extended to Sunday because of the flooding.
WWL Louisiana reached out to the Sewerage and Water Board, asking whether it has any insight into the cause of the worsening flooding.
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