WALTHAM, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) -- A storm ripped through the Commonwealth Wednesday afternoon, and caused flooding in several areas of the state, including Waltham.
Around 3:30 p.m., the water was knee deep in one of the city's parking lots. Fortunately, the drains have been cleared and were back in working order by Wednesday evening.
The Waltham Fire Lieutenant said there was a tremendous amount of flooding, but no injuries were reported. All of the engines were out Wednesday afternoon and several abandoned cars were found.
The southbound side of Route 128 in the Waltham area had water about three quarters of the way up the jersey barrier.
But those weren't the only problems in the city. Cars stalled out on a train underpass and the road was impassable; a van even had to be pushed away by two men. One man even decided to travel by canoe.
Employees of Nova Biomedical went outside around 3:30 p.m. and discovered dozens of their cars were unreachable.
"In a few minutes the water was up to the door, now it's going down a little bit," employee Azniv Maserejian said.
Water from a drainage system leaked into the biomedical company's building forcing cleaners to use heavy duty vacuums to suck it up. Engineer Bill Doyle explained that the area where the biomedical company is, abutting the Charles River, happens to be where water from the Brandeis University area and sections of Waltham drain into to.
"They came down really hard, really fast. We typically don't have storms like that, as you know, and really what happened I believe is it just overwhelmed the system. The systems are designed to carry so much flow and it was more than the system could handle," Doyle said.
He went on to say that they are working on improvements to the catchment area where the water collects before it flows into the Charles.
Residents throughout the North Shore also battled flooding issues Wednesday.
Cox Media Group
