ELLENVILLE – Residents in one of the buildings at the Country Club Arms apartment complex were evacuated from their homes on Monday, after massive rainfall caused a nearby pond to overflow and flood the bottom floor of their building with about six inches of water.

On Tuesday afternoon, the evidence of the flooding was everywhere, even though the water on the ground's surface was gone. Walking around the rear of the complex's B-building was more akin to walking on a wet carpet, so saturated with water was the ground. The side of the building showed precisely how high the waters had gotten, the bricks that had been submerged underwater a darker shade of red than the dry ones above. Sitting on a chair outside one apartment, a decorated pumpkin sagged and wrinkled from being waterlogged in the flood.

At around noon on Monday, January 25, the Ellenville Police and Fire Departments, along with Village Manager Mary Sheeley and Building Code Enforcement Officer Brian Schug, arrived at the Country Club Arms Apartments on Nevele Road to find that the complex's B-building was submerged in about a foot of water, with about six inches of water making its way into the bottom floor apartments. The pond at the Cedar Grove Apartments, whose property borders the rear of Country Club Arms, had overflowed due to the rain storm that had hit the area that day.

"We couldn't keep up with the water that was coming into the building," said Ellenville Fire Chief George Budd.

While the emergency responders who arrived at the scene began pumping as much water out of the area as they could, it was determined that the power had to be turned off and the residents evacuated. The danger, said Code Enforcement Officer Schug, lay in a cracked conduit casing, which could have caused a fire if water had gotten in.

"[The Central Hudson Representative] said that if water got into that crack, that it would arc, and start a fire," said Schug. "And Central Hudson's normal termination process may not even stop the arcing of the electric." Central Hudson shut the power to the building until Schug could verify that sufficient repairs to the conduit had been made.

The building's eighteen residents were forced to find refuge where they could; many found places with relatives nearby, and yet others were taken to a temporary shelter set up by the American Red Cross at the Kerhonkson Firehouse.

However, it turned out that a few residents who weren't home at the time of the flooding and relocation were stuck without a place to go by the end of the evening. Ellenville Fire Chief George Budd came to the Ellenville Board of Trustees meeting that was already in progress to ask for help in finding a place for the displaced residents to stay. Fortunately, Kent and Chiring Leung, managers of the Village Motel, were present at the meeting and graciously volunteered to donate rooms to the displaced residents for the night.

As of Tuesday, the manager of the Country Club Arms Apartments, David Castro, had already hired an electrician to fix the aforementioned cracked conduit, which would allow Central Hudson to return the building's power and get residents back in their homes. However, Castro was adamant that a solution for the overflowing pond be found.

"Cedar Grove apartments, they've gone through a lot of owners," said Castro. "And I've been trying to get them to fix that pond, but they gave me the runaround." Castro said that the new owners of the apartments next door seem like good people, so he's hopeful that something can be done to prevent a flood in the future.

"This is the third time that this has happened to me in 14 years. It's hard to keep up with it."

As recently as 2005, the pond had similarly overflowed, causing even more severe flooding of the Country Club Arms. According to Schug, the drain on the Cedar Grove property was inspected in 2005 and was found to have been clogged, causing it to back up. This time around, he said, it was likely that accumulated snow and ice was the culprit of the flooding.

Alexis Muniz, Cedar Grove's manager since May of 2009, said that they planned on hiring an engineer to take a look at the situation, and to see what could be recommended so that there isn't more flooding in the two complex's futures.

"Now that the water level has gone down, it's draining fine. It's going through perfectly, so we're thinking it's just an abundance of water," said Muniz. "We do have plans to get an engineer in here and check it out." When asked if the complex was formulating plans to put in another drainage area, she said, "We were really waiting to see what the engineer said. If that's something we have to do, we're going to have to do it."