A flash food swept through Pataskala early Thursday, leaving a path of destruction and a muddy mess – and moving on to Hebron

Awakened at 4:30 a.m. by the heavy rain falling on Pataskala, Carla Thomas ventured outside the front door of her mobile home along the South Fork of the Licking River to see ankle-deep water in her yard.

Rain fell hard, and in sheets, dumping between 3 and 4.5 inches in a few hours – on top of nearly a foot of rain that fell in parts of Licking County in the past two weeks.

“An hour later, it was waist high,” she said, and it was time to leave.

Soon after, the raging river water knocked over a tree that crashed into the mobile home next door – the one occupied by her son, Robert Thomas II, his pregnant wife, Megan, and their children.

“He rolled over on top of her just as the tree crashed through the roof into their bedroom,” Carla Thomas said.

Robert said he wasn’t sure exactly how he knew to cover his wife.

“I heard a crickety-cracking and jumped,” he said, adding that no one in the family was injured. 

“We just saw our baby for the first time yesterday,” he said about an ultrasound image during a doctor visit while reflecting on the near-disaster.

| Read related story: Flash flooding fills basements, closes roads, delays school start in several Licking County districts

Just then, Ben Peek came wading through floodwater that still covered a street that runs through the mobile-home park. He moved to Pataskala 48 hours earlier – just up a slight hill from the park, where his home was unaffected by the flooding – and he figured he should help his new neighbors.

Then, Chris Yoder came by. He has lived in the park for three years, the past year in his current home, which he had evacuated as the water rose. The wooden steps up to his front door had been pushed away from the home by fast-moving water, but he could still get into his place with one big step.

He opened the door with trepidation, not knowing whether water that rose two feet or more in the mobile-home park had made it inside.

“It only made it an inch or so inside,” he said with relief. “There’s no water damage. I can’t believe it.”

Surveying the waterlogged park and listening to the loud, fast-moving water in the South Fork just a few feet from his home, he stood momentarily to take it all in. “This is the worst I’ve seen here.”

| Read more: Drownings and recent flooding bring renewed attention to the need for water safety

About that time, insult heaped on injury when the neighborhood that had been hit so hard by the overnight storm had to be evacuated again.

“There’s a gas leak!” shouted Robert Thomas. “Mom, call 911! Everyone, get out! There’s a natural gas leak!”

Indeed, the smell of fuel oil leaking from one of the mobile homes mixed with the rotten-egg smell of natural gas. A couple of people who had been smoking cigarettes in the aftermath of the flooding quickly doused them and headed for Willow Street.

There, Dakota Dixon and Timothy Jones, who live in a one-story apartment along Willow Street, joined the parade of people who were facing their second evacuation because of the flood. 

They had been awakened in the night by the rain, and then water started seeping into their home. “We left and got an Airbnb,” Dixon said.

Others found temporary refuge in an emergency shelter near downtown Pataskala.

Pataskala Mayor Mike Compton said the West Licking Fire District had performed several water rescues early Thursday morning, and that by late morning that water levels had dropped dramatically from the height of the flooding.  

“Almost every road in and out of Pataskala was closed,” he said.

The city street department was out assessing damage and cleaning out storm-sewer basins, he said.

By noon, the floodwater had mostly receded from Pataskala streets, leaving behind a path of destruction and a muddy mess. Along Main Street near Broad Street – 50 yards or so from the river – gasoline-powered pumps were drawing water out of flooded basements and into the street.

Hebron neighborhood evacuated

Across the county to the east in Hebron, residents of the Greenbriar Village mobile home faced dual challenges: As floodwaters rose around them, electricity to the neighborhood was turned off, leaving them indefinitely without power. 

Emergency responders from fire departments across central Ohio went door-to-door in the community, evacuating seniors and vulnerable residents. By 11:45 a.m., about 30 people had evacuated, hauling suitcases, laundry hampers and pet carriers. Some went to stay with relatives across town, while others explored options for hotels in the area.

“There’s significant flooding across the village,” said Hebron Village Administrator Brittany Misner, who was on site at Greenbriar Village to assist with evacuations and emergency planning.

Misner said many residents opted to stay, hoping to wait out the flood. Though the sun was shining by late morning, Misner said it could get worse in the neighborhood before the day was over. 

“It’s usually a few hours later that we start getting flooding from other communities,” Misner said. “We’re hoping that the water recedes before that final push comes our way.” 

Hebron and Buckeye Lake sit downriver from Pataskala, and as the flooding subsides to the west in Pataskala, the South Fork of the Licking River and its tributaries were expected to swell. 

Throughout the day, Misner said, local businesses around Hebron and Buckeye Lake mobilized, dropping off donations for neighbors displaced by floods.

Alan Miller and Julia Lerner write for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.