AUBURN, Maine — Flash flooding ripped through the Lewiston-Auburn area Tuesday evening, leaving roads and homes flooded and damaged.
While the rain event lasted just a couple of hours, the damage will take days to repair, according to Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque.
"There's really no prep that could have been done," Levesque said. "This is a first for me, this is a one-in-a-hundred-year storm event, a biblical deluge of rain in a short amount of time, and hopefully we never see it again."
Pieces of asphalt were seen jutting out of the ground Wednesday morning on the River Walk along the Androscoggin River. Trash and pieces of wood were seen along the river's bank, and all of the afternoon construction crews were seen digging up the asphalt. City officials told NEWS CENTER Maine they hope to have it paved over within the next week.
"It's been a very busy day," Scott Holland said, who is the deputy public works director in Auburn. "Obviously we have a lot of work we need to accomplish and on top of this, we have a lot of other projects going on."
The estimated cost of the repairs in Auburn could be around a few million dollars, according to the city.
Meantime in Lewiston, tenants at 37 Union St. said their home is condemned after the roof collapsed, sending gallons of rainwater into the units.
"It was hectic, everyone grabbed what they could," Derek Sluhocki, who lived at the building, said. "There was a lot of things going through my head if I'm being honest, it was just shocking."
Another tenant, Amy Reed, said she came home from work to see the flooding and said most of the people at the building had to sleep outside.
"I was baffled, I was not expecting to have the entire outdoors inside my apartment building," Reed said.
Tenants said the building owners won't allow people to go back inside, and told them they need to find another place to live.
NEWS CENTER Maine called the property management, Central Maine Property Management, but did not hear back.
American Red Cross workers were outside the apartment building Wednesday trying to set up tenants with temporary living arrangements.
For Sluhocki, he plans to stay in a hotel Wednesday night but said he may be looking at homelessness.
"We don't know, we just got to stick together, me and my wife," Sluhocki said.