‘Overwhelming’: Floodwater gushes through Akron tavern, leaving muddy mess

AKRON, Ohio (WJW) – A small creek in the Merriman Valley in Akron is normally a babbling brook that runs underneath a strip mall, housing a popular neighborhood tavern called the Noisy Oyster.

But on Thursday night, torrential rains turned the creek into a raging river.

Employees and customers at the Noisy Oyster first noticed flood water coming up through the floor and then the walls.

“Then you hear a huge ‘crack’ and the floor split open and then the river started coming in through the floor and so we just go into ‘get everybody out safely’ mode,” said employee Stefanie Wise.

In a video that was being recorded inside the tavern at the time, you can hear the floor buckling and an employee exclaiming, “oh my God, oh my God! Dude, it’s crazy!”

After the customers were evacuated, the owner and employees watched helplessly as the water continued to rise and eventually buried the Noisy Oyster in a layer of heavy mud.

“I thought ‘OK, you know, let’s get everybody out and then it’ll be a one or two day clean-up, you know, squeegees, mops, shovels,’ but then as it got worse and worse. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen from there,” said owner Jon Curtis.

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“It’s just hard to watch somebody’s whole life wash away, you know, because we just love him so much and seeing it all happen, your heart, you just feel so bad,” Wise said.

The ordeal on Thursday night was not the first time the tavern has been flooded by high water from the creek.

In fact, we’re told it has happened at least seven times over the past 15 years, but this time was by far the worst.

The owner says repairing the structural damage may end up being a bigger job than the clean-up.

“It is just overwhelming and just trying to decide where to start, where to go first and how to attack it,” said Curtis.

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik, who visited the mud-caked business on Friday, says the Merriman Valley is one of several areas of the city flooded by the storm. He told the team at the Noisy Oyster that they are not alone in dealing with the impact of the flooding.

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“Something you worry about a lot with the Valley, but I mean, this was a huge storm and it just came so quickly, it just kind of came out of nowhere,” the mayor said.

Employees of the Noisy Oyster say what is most alarming is that they did not know they were in jeopardy until it was almost too late.

“Help us determine what made this happen or if it was truly just extreme weather, but I know I got the flash flood update on my phone an hour after we all had to run out of the restaurant due to this. I mean, I took a screen grab of it because I was like ‘yeah, that’s a lot of help now, thanks.’ You know, a little bit of warning for situations like this would probably go far to help all of the businesses that have been damaged from this,” said Wise.

The tavern will be closed for at least a couple of weeks as they attempt to make repairs, and a customer has started a GoFundMe page to support the employees.

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