CINCINNATI — With spring time comes rainy weather and storms, which means home and business owners need to be prepared in case they start taking on water. That’s certainly the case this weekend as parts of the state could be under water soon.
Ron Schmidt and his son were busy Friday morning at Blue Bell Beach preparing for the flooding. The bar is right next to the Miami River. And the Cincinnati area is expected to receive anywhere between 2-4 inches of rain by Saturday.
“If you wait and do nothing you’ll be here four in the morning doing,” said Schmidt. “So we try to get stuff done that we can during the day and make it a little easier, I guess.”
Schmidt has a party set up for Saturday in his rental hall behind his bar. With the forecast as it is, he’s thought about cancelling it – but hasn’t taken that step just yet.
“I got that rented tomorrow and they want to come decorate today and I haven’t told them yet,” he said. “But you might want to hold off on the decorating.”
Over the past 35 years, Schmidt said his bar has been flooded a number of times. And while the monetary costs for the damages hits hard, he said it’s the work done afterwards that’s worse.
“The worst part is your labor and time,” he said. “You’re struggling to get it back to where it was and some of the damage you can’t do nothing about it.”
And the Blue Bell Beach isn’t his only bar that’s experienced flooding. He’s also the owner of Drew’s on The River which is right by the Ohio River. At that location, he has gone the extra mile to install a system that keeps water out.
“We put single pane windows in and just rolled the doors up, take the windows out,” he said. “We have them designed to where it’s less than five minutes per window.”
Schmidt said he’s hopeful that neither of his locations gets flooded this weekend. But either way, he says he’ll be prepared and ready.
“Just start getting stuff out before the last minute, panicking at four in the morning,” he said. “We been there.”
