Millville sees worst flash flooding in decades, some residents say

Some residents of the Village of Millville are calling the flash flooding on the evening of Wednesday, March 4, the worst they’ve seen in decades.

Millville – less than 20 minutes southeast of Oxford – was one of the areas in Butler County hit the hardest by recent storms and flooding earlier this month.

Mayor Curt Pennington told the Oxford Free Press he had personally never seen flooding in the village to the extent seen on March 4.

“It’s rained before and flooded some basements here and there, but nothing like the whole village (was) this time,” Pennington said.

Pennington said his own basement was flooded with 5 feet of water, drowning his freezers full of meat and covering the area in debris.

According to the National Weather Service office in Wilmington, Ohio, Millville saw between three and five inches on March 4 alone and around five to eight inches overall between March 3 and March 6.

Pennington said that beginning on March 4, water was “flowing like a river” down Mill Street, which was blocked off for most of the following day while members of the Ross Township Fire Department helped some residents pump water out of their basements.

Ross Township Fire Chief Christopher Johns said calls to the department began at around midnight on the morning of March 5. He said the department answered around 20 emergency calls in total between that time and the evening of March 5, with nearly all of them relating to flooding and evacuations.

Johns said his crew pumped their first basement at 12:15 a.m. on March 5 and stayed out all day to help residents. On Ross Hanover Road, Johns said firefighters saved two adults, three cats and one dog from rising floodwaters.

Reily Township Volunteer Fire Chief Clayton Lightfield said his crew completed two large animal rescues from rising floodwaters and helped one resident pump their basement following the event.

Hanover Township Fire Chief Fred Stitsinger said his crew responded to one emergency house call related to the floods.

On the day after the flood, several American Red Cross volunteers could be seen on the ground in Millville, helping residents.

Don Hawkins, regional communications manager for the American Red Cross central and southern Ohio region, said although he didn’t have an exact number, the branch received more than a few calls about damage caused by flooding in Millville on March 5. He said the organization didn’t need to open a shelter for any flood victims, but it has opened several cases with residents which it is still working to resolve.

He said the Red Cross provides food, financial assistance, spiritual and mental health guidance and help with contacting emergency resources to residents affected by flooding.

“These folks are dealing with a very tough situation, and we are here to help,” Hawkins said.

The Butler County Emergency Management Agency (BCEMA) was also on the scene of the flooding alongside the Ross Township Fire Department and returned the following day to perform a damage assessment, according to Director Jim Bolen. 

Overall, Bolen said BCEMA determined using Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) guidelines 18 structures were somewhat affected, 21 structures in Millville had minor damage and five structures had major damage.

Bolen said BCEMA forwards these findings to the Ohio Emergency Management Agency (OEMA), which determines whether to declare a state of disaster. But he said the flooding event on March 4 was likely not to the magnitude to receive relief from OEMA or FEMA. Still, he said the agency has partners who could assist individual homeowners who may be uninsured.

By press time March 11, the state of Ohio had not requested assistance from FEMA for damage caused by the flooding.

Overflow from Indian Creek

Tina McConnell grew up in Millville and has remained in close proximity to her mother for the past 60 years. McConnell monitored the rain situation for her mother throughout the night of March 4. She said around 10 p.m. is when Indian Creek began to overflow.

“We have not had a flood in this area … of this magnitude in over 25 years,” she said.

Her mother lives in the village’s former mortuary – a log cabin now covered in white siding – on Liberty Street just a few houses down from the creek. McConnell said her mother dropped her flood insurance because the village recently completed work on the creek to protect residents, and they hadn’t seen flooding for a while.

This past summer, Pennington said the village was given an American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant of about $400,000 and spent time dredging out Indian Creek, removing small islands and trees from the water flowing alongside the village throughout the summer of 2025. He said he feels like the damage could have been worse had this work not been completed.

When the water from the creek rushed down Liberty Street that night, McConnell’s mother was in the bathroom with her dog, trying to calm him down about the storm. That’s when creek water started coming up through the floor vents.

“Her whole first floor is flooded,” McConnell said, adding she was still waiting on emergency assistance by the evening of March 5. McConnell called the American Red Cross to help.

McConnell said besides the damage to the house, a new furnace was lost that was recently installed in the basement, which the family hadn’t yet finished paying off.

Richie Gorsuch, who’s lived on Liberty Street in Millville since 2002, said the water reached about 5 feet in his basement. He began pumping water out of the house himself the morning of March 5 and had only gotten it down to around 3 1/2 feet by almost 4 p.m.

He said the last time he remembers Millville flooding to this scale was 1996, but since then, residents have mainly seen some runoff on their properties.

“It was pretty bad,” Gorsuch said of the flooding on March 4, adding his furnace and water heater were damaged.

Tina Pope, who owns Autos Plus Auto Sales and has been living along Liberty Street since 2019, said she lost about 20 cars due to water damage, and her back office was underwater.

“We got home at 10:30 (p.m.), and that’s when the water started gushing down the street,” Pope said, adding her family stayed outside until around 4 a.m., pumping water and trying to clean up. “That’s when the lightning started cracking again.”

By around 7:30 a.m., Pope’s residence across the street from the auto shop had been flooded, ruining her decorations, family heirlooms and photos among other precious items.

“Everything was floating over at our house,” she said. “The basement took on so much water, it’s literally almost up to the floorboards at the main home. So we lost a lot.”

Pope said the damage to the business will “put us out for weeks, if not months.”

She said the Village of Millville could respond to the flooding by looking more closely at the drainage systems along the streets, as the ones near her seem to back up nearly every time it rains.