Heavy rain swells Darby Creek from trickle to torrent

TOM LAVIN stood outside his Darby Borough home yesterday morning and watched helplessly as Darby Creek began to assimilate his block, appropriately named Creek Road.

"This is a massive amount of water," said Lavin, 65, a retired electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98. "I got my fingers crossed."

For most of the year, Darby Creek, which runs from Berwyn to the Delaware River, is so shallow that you can walk across it. But it has personality. The Jekyll-and-Hyde type.

Yesterday, heavy rain transformed the puny waterway into a raging monster, with brown-water rapids causing the heaviest flooding in Darby since Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Dozens of residents who fled their homes sought shelter at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital. Several had to be rescued, including an elderly man who crawled out of his second-floor window and across Springfield Road on a horizontal firetruck ladder that served as a bridge.

Darby Police Chief Bob Smythe said the water was about 6 or 7 feet deep near the flood-prone intersection of Springfield Road and MacDade Boulevard.

"After it stopped raining, the water went up, not down," Smythe said. "The creek is 26 miles long and it just keeps coming."

No injuries were reported in Delaware County, but officials had to make about 100 water rescues, including drivers who underestimated the depth of street water.

"The power of water, frankly, amazes me," said the county's emergency-services director, Ed Truitt.

A woman near Collegeville drowned when she became trapped in her car about 6 a.m. on Stump Hall Road, police said.

The National Weather Service reported that 5 inches of rain fell in Philadelphia, with more in some western suburbs. More than 10 inches of rain fell in Graterford, Montgomery County, and more than 9 inches in Chadds Ford.

Philadelphia, Montgomery, Bucks and Delaware counties remained under a flood warning last night, according to the National Weather Service.

On Main Street in Manayunk, residents and businesses dealt with the Schuylkill, which was more than a foot over flood stage. Residents were evacuated in East Falls and Manayunk.

At least one restaurant, Mad River, was forced to close due to a flooded-out parking lot and basement.

"Our whole parking lot flooded and we got water in our basement so we've just been pumping that out," said general manager Joe DiCandido. "Now we have a cleaning crew in here just disinfecting everything."

Back in Darby, housepainter Freddie Casper, 54, was surveying the receding floodwaters.

"I've been in Darby more than 50 years. This is the second worst," he said. "I don't care. I want to die here."

There's nothing you can do to stop Darby Creek, Casper said as he took a puff from his stogie, so there's no use worrying about it.

"Nah," he said. "Just clean up."

Staff writer Christine Olley and the Associated Press contributed to this report.