Valley Health Facilities Manager Charles Rogers was awakened Monday morning by a phone call.

The basement of the rehabilitation center was flooded with 3 to 4 feet of water.

Crews began pumping water out of the basement shortly after seven o'clock Monday morning. Six hours later, as of 1 p.m. the process continued.

The water flooded a majority of the physical equipment for the building.
As a result there was no hot water or heat.

"Our concern is getting the plant back up, seeing what is operational, because we have people that stay here overnight," says Rogers. "We have rehabilitation services up on the third floor, Blue Ridge Hospice on the fourth floor, and they stay there overnight and we want to make sure they are warm and have hot water," adds Rogers.

Winchester Public Works was trying to pump water out of a clogged storm drain on Harvest Drive. Superintendent Jason Didawick says workers were out last week trying to check and clean drains before the storm.

But crews were still trying to remove debris from the winter storms and the already saturated ground did not help.

"When you have this much rain come down and with all the snow and ice that we've had, it gets higher up on the banks and washes off the debris, trees, branches, all kinds of materials that came down and that's what clogged up a couple of the inlets in the area," explains Didawick.

As the storm wraps up Didawick plans to have crews work on checking and clearing all water drains to get ready for spring and summer storms.

"It's a matter of what you can see, getting out there before the storm, and we have a preventative maintenance plan where we go in and clean out a lot of the inlets and a lot of the underground storm drainage," says Didawick. He adds, "We try to get in there right after the winter months, but this storm didn't give us a chance to."

As far as the Valley Health Rehab Center, as of 5 pm Monday the water was pumped out and workers were checking mechanical problems. A rental unit and portable compressor were installed to get heat and hot water back Monday night.

"We had some people here and what they did was called Winchester Fire and Rescue and they did respond," explains Rogers. He adds, "We asked them if they could help us get water out of the basement. They called Winchester Utilities Department and they were very, very gracious to send a crew out here."