‘Devastating’ Flooding Hits Croydon

It hasn’t been uncommon over the decades to see street flooding on Spencer Drive and surrounding roads in Bristol Township’s Croydon section. Hurricane Agnes in 1972, Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and Hurricane Irene in 2011 all did it.

However, according to several residents LevittownNow.com spoke with, the hours-long soaker that dumped 6 to 10 inches of rain on the area Monday afternoon and evening brought the worst flooding in their memory.

“We’ve never had anything like this happen here. I went down Janet and Garfield avenues and they were like a big lake. It’s been 16 hours and it’s still like a lake. You’d be better swimmin’ than walkin’,” said Dan Winslow, a five-decade Croydon resident who was surveying the scene.

A resident on his bicycle said he pedaled by to look at his friends’ home on Spencer Drive. He said his friends were rescued by firefighters with a boat Monday night.

Diane Kowalewski, a 46-year Croydon resident, said she knows some of the low-lying streets flood, but the water never passes the sidewalk and gets into homes.

“This is new,” she said. “It’s scary.”

Preparing for a move to Florida, where he would expect to see street flooding after a bad storm, Spencer Drive resident Matt Briegel, said he was surprised by how far up the water came.

“I’ve never seen it flooded so high. It’s devastating,” he said.

Unlike many of his neighbors, Briegel’s home narrowly avoided having flood waters inside of it, but his front door was just feet from the waterline.

Some Croydon residents reported flooding was made worse by large pickup trucks that drove through the high water quickly and created wakes that pushed water into their already flooding homes.

Winslow said what makes this storm different is that there wasn’t the usual Delaware River or Neshaminy Creek flooding that almost always accompanies major storms.

“It seems like it’s a bowl here in New Croydon,” he said, referencing the name for the section of homes across Route 13 that are further from the river. “The water isn’t going anywhere.”

The Pennsylvania Flood Risk Tool from Penn State University showed the areas of Croydon that were hardest hit were among the lowest. Spencer Drive and Janet Avenue where much of the water was pooled sits about 19 to 20 feet above sea level, where nearby streets that were not covered by water sat four to six feet higher. Much of the area that flooded is considered to have a 1 percent annual risk of flooding.

The National Weather Service called the storm a 100-year flood.

National Weather Service data from the storm showed two locations in Croydon receiving about 10 inches of rain and another location in Bristol Township getting 8.6 inches. A few miles away in Levittown, there was 3.7 inches of rain, while Langhorne got about 2 inches. A 40-minute drive north in Lahaksa there was only a little more than a quarter of an inch of rain.

The area where the flooding was worst in Croydon once was fields and woods, but homes replaced the open space over the decades, according to state historical records.

Bensalem Township and Bristol Borough also had severe flooding in the storm. In the borough, most of the standing water had disappeared by Tuesday morning.

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