Flooding gives way to a class-action lawsuit

GROSSE POINTE PARK, Mich. (WXYZ) – With thousands still cleaning up from the weekend floods, attorney Paul Doherty says he has the funds to file a lawsuit for millions of dollars in damages.

“This storm wasn’t a surprise. It’s not the storm of the century as they like to tell us, ”he says.

Doherty lives in Grosse Pointe Park and has his own damage. The rain that fell early Saturday morning did not flow into the street sewers. It went into the basement. The water filled his basement completely to the ceiling.

Doherty showed us how the Grosse Pointe Park police sent out a warning to local residents on Saturday morning stating, “Around 1am GLWA at Conner Creek Pump Station in Detroit had failed, major floods in Grosse Pointe Par and Den to cause neighboring large points. “

This facility is located on the east side of Detroit between Jefferson Avenue and the Detroit River.

Macomb County’s public works commissioner Candice Miller took her concern public by posting a video on YouTube asking why the pumping station was down.

Haley and Marco Bonafede live in Grosse Pointe Park. They lost everything in their basement. They don’t have any children. They lost their furry child, the cat poncho.

Haley said to us: “I don’t know if he drowned or if there is a drain down there, so he …” then Marco said: “Sorry, it’s very hard to think about how this defenseless animal must have gone.”

There is a 45 day window to file the lawsuit. It could become a class action lawsuit for thousands of people rallying on the east side of Metro Detroit.

The Great Lakes Water Authority provided us with this statement:

It is not uncommon for an event of this magnitude to be associated with unforeseen operational problems. At the start of Friday’s rainy event, there was a brief period in which the Conner Creek pumping station experienced a partial interruption in operations; At no time was the pumping station offline. The GLWA team worked quickly on the repair and the pumping station was fully functional again in less than an hour. Despite this partial malfunction, pumps were constantly running throughout the system. GLWA has started a follow-up investigation that will examine the regional system’s response to this unprecedented rainy event, which saw more rain in 13 hours than it normally did in all of June. It is important to note that the system worked as designed, the amount and intensity of rain received would have overwhelmed any combined collection system.

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