Most people may be rejoicing the return of warm weather, but in one Long Island neighborhood, the spring melt caused such destructive flooding that homes had to be condemned.
Melting snow piled along a sod farm on Sherwood Drive in Shoreham flooded the street Wednesday, and the backyards and basements lined along it.
Michael Harding returned home Wednesday after receiving a panicked call from his children and found 3 to 4 feet of water in the basement.
"The force of it was just the real scary part of it, just the magnitude," he said. "It was ricocheting off the house, it shattered windows, the water."
"There's really nowhere to put snow over here. They just plow and keep berming it up, and there's nowhere for the water to go, except to us, the lowest point," he said.
The flooding caused so much damage that Harding's house and another house on the block were condemned.
Neighbor Andre Blount considered himself lucky for getting only about an inch of water in his basement.
"I still would never think something like that could happen," he said.
But fire officials say it could happen again with more rain and warm temperatures in the forecast. In the meantime, Harding is packing up and looking for a new place for his family to stay until they can return home.
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"We're going to have to go to a hotel somewhere," he said.
In Yonkers, a mudslide that forced an evacuation of two buildings Wednesday was also thought to have been caused in part by the snow melt. Around 150 residents there were forced to find other shelter for the night as crews shored up and assessed the building.
