{"id":785062,"date":"2026-05-09T20:58:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T20:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/785062\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T20:58:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T20:58:15","slug":"philadelphia-launches-eastwick-flood-monitoring-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/785062\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia launches Eastwick flood monitoring system"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

When the rain pours down in Philadelphia, residents of the city\u2019s Eastwick neighborhood feel anxious, not knowing whether their homes will flood one more time.\n<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s Office of Emergency Management launched a monitoring system Saturday that uses flood gauges to notify residents when water levels are rising. Residents say it will ease some of the uncertainty and dread that comes with heavy storms.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we have something to warn us, to make sure that we get our cars, get our handicapped people, our pets, and make sure we get our things out of the basement and move up to a higher level,\u201d said Brenda Whitfield, an Eastwick resident and community advocate.\n <\/p>\n

The project, six years in the making, uses sensors and cameras to provide real-time data on conditions like rainfall, water level and flood risk. Residents can access the information on their phones and computers, and get resources to help mitigate flooding at home.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really important to us to make sure that the residents themselves could see this information directly, whether at times to give them peace of mind or to be able to make more informed decisions before and during a storm,\u201d said Erin Mossop, OEM\u2019s alerts and warning coordinator.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThis can look like anything from making sure your medication and your paperwork are together, knowing when to move your car, or even deciding to stay elsewhere until the storm has passed,\u201d Mossop said.\n<\/p>\n

The Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood was built on low-lying marshland. The nearby Cobbs and Darby creeks have a history of overflowing, and residents have experienced property damage<\/a> and the increased cost of flood insurance<\/a>. The community has seen several so-called \u201c100-year floods\u201d in recent decades, and conditions in the area are expected to worsen as climate change threatens more intense rainfall in the years ahead.
\n\"EastwickEastwick resident Brenda Whitfield says the community\u2019s new flood monitoring system will help residents better prepare for emergencies. (Zo\u00eb Read\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Residents advocated for a flood warning system during the summer of 2020 in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Isaias, when flood waters surged through homes, damaging property and leading to about 100 rescues in the community.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it\u2019s a wonderful thing that we had no loss of life from that event, it\u2019s not the ideal scenario. We would much prefer to not have to rescue people in those types of events,\u201d city Managing Director Adam Thiel said. \u201cAnd of course, the big thing is we would like for that recurrent flooding to stop recurring.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":785063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,287737,8580,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-785062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-america","tag-eastwick","tag-flooding","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116546628607686944","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}