Lakeville Police Flooded with Calls During Recent Heavy Rain

(This story is written by Lakeville Police Chief Thomas Vonhof.)

Sometimes unpredicted local weather events can change the entire focus of a patrol shift.

About 4 a.m. on [July 13] it started raining heavily in the entire south metro area, including Lakeville, and continued raining very heavily for the next 4½ hours. By around 8 a.m. the patrol dayshift crew was responding to multiple reports of flash flooding from the heavy rain topping over roadways and causing roadway flooding in several locations throughout the City.

Patrol shift supervisor Sergeant Jim Puncochar assigned officers and staff to the various flooded roadways and utilized the Police Reserve officers who had come in to work the PanO-Prog fun run event that had been cancelled due to the rain. Fortunately, Lakeville City Public Works staff was already out working on Pan-O-Prog clean up and they quickly diverted to the flooded roadways to keep the storm drains open and draining.

Within three hours, the excess rainwater had receded and the roadways were all open again and the rest of the Pan-O-Prog events went on as scheduled. The estimates of the rain totals for the area were in excess of five inches that fell in the short four hour time frame.

In spite of the roadway flooding, fortunately there were no injuries reported and there were no reports received of flooding causing damage to private property. Sergeant Puncochar indicated that the flooding on Dodd Boulevard at 194th Street was the most severe. One vehicle drove into the water and stalled after the water went over the hood. The driver was able to get out of the vehicle safely and the roadway was closed for three hours. The tow truck driver could not get to the vehicle until the water receded.

Flooding also occurred at Ipava and 192nd Street, 205th and Kenrick / Jupiter / Judicial, 167th Street and Cedar, 181st Street and Highview, 215th and Jacquard, 162nd and Jaguar and Dodd Trail Park.

FEW INCIDENTS, ARRESTS DURING PAN-O-PROG

Another Pan-O-Prog has come and gone and I am happy to report that even with very large crowds in attendance at all the events from July 4th through [July 14], a record rainfall event last Saturday morning, and the hot weather, we had remarkably few incidents or arrests. A significant reason of why there are so few public safety issues is all the planning and coordination that occurs behind the scenes. Captain Tim Knutson, who serves on the Pan-O-Prog Committee, started the public safety planning process in January and worked with his team of patrol sergeants to put tactical staff deployment plans together for each major event.

CAR CRASHES INTO BOAT

Officer Michelle Roberts responded to a crash on County Road 50 involving a boat and a car one evening this week. When Officer Roberts arrived on the scene, she found that a red pickup truck pulling a boat on trailer was stopped for a red light. A car came up from behind and rear ended the boat on the trailer, sending it into the bed of the pickup. The driver of the car was issued a citation and the vehicles were towed from the location.

WEEKLY LPD SNAPSHOT

Sampling of LPD activity for the week of July 10 – 17, 2013

Traffic crashes 6 Alarms 42 Animal Calls 38