Days before the next Spring storm, residents along 16th street in Long Beach are bracing for another round of floods and crumbling streets. Mekahlo Medina reports for the NBC4 News on Apr. 3, 2024.
Days before the next Spring storm, residents along 16th street in Long Beach are bracing for another round of floods and crumbling streets.
“The pot holes are becoming enormous,” said Donna Young, who has lived on 16th street for more than 10 years. “The asphalt is starting to come up and in a minute it’s going to be a sinkhole.”
Young says flood waters three feet high have covered the street after a storm and have damaged cars and homes.
“The car over here that parks over here frequently, that car is basically under water and it’s ruined,” said Young pointing to a neighbors vehicle parked on the street.
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“Then the water floods and gets inside, there is mold,” said Tony Perez, who lives a few doors down and says the mold grows under his car mats. “It smells really bad.”
“I have brought this to my councilwoman’s attention several times,” said Young while at a Long Beach city council meeting in March.
She brought a bag of crumbling asphalt to demonstrate the conditions on the road and asked her councilwoman Suely Saro for help.
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Saro could not address her directly at the public hearing portion of the meeting, but she did issue a statement to NBCLA.
“My office has been in consistent communications with residents regarding their concerns on 16th Street and MLK Jr Ave. I am committed to addressing issues of the quality of our streets. During heavy rains as we have experienced recently, the area around 16th & MLK is prone to street flooding due to limitations of the existing storm drain infrastructure,” wrote Sari. “The City of Long Beach’s Public Works team has inspected the system to ensure there is no blockage. The storm water naturally dissipates as the system catches up with large volumes of water in a short amount of time.”
“We want to make sure we have your address and fix it,” said Mator Rex Richardson at the meeting. “After it rains, they (potholes) are all over the city. It takes us a couple of months to get filled.”
Young said she has been complaining for years to fix the roads and the drainage system that causes the road to flood each storm. There are only two drains for the entire block.
“We are getting nothing done. We are tired of the broken promises. We want results now.”
The department of public works have been filling potholes since the storms this January.
They’ve also been working at repairing hundreds of miles of streets across Long Beach since last year.
