INDIANAPOLIS — Wicker Road on the south side of Indianapolis can quickly turn into “Wicker Lake” anytime there is heavy rain and flooding. It happens right at the corner of Wicker Road and South Tibbs Avenue, which is the entrance to the Whispering Falls neighborhood.
“I’ve been trapped multiple times,” said Abigail Forrello, who has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years. “And we kind of all sit down at the end of the street and watch people going in and out and take pictures and videos and make a guessing game of who’s going to make it through and who’s not going to make it through and warn people don’t go beyond this point.”
Forello and her 9-month-old baby had to evacuate their home, or they’d be stuck inside their neighborhood. Her low-riding Toyota Camry isn’t the best match for Wicker Road when the water takes over. While taking a different route might be ideal, there’s only one way in and one way out of the Whispering Falls neighborhood in Southern Dunes.
“People are either staying somewhere overnight before it gets bad, or they’re parking their cars across the street and walking over, but basically you are trapped until hopefully it goes down either that night or the next day,” Forrello said. “Or in this case a couple days because it’s been a nonstop flood since Thursday.”
The floodwater on the street can get so high that residents either need a big truck or a small boat to get across. In the 10 years that she’s lived in the neighborhood, Forrello has seen plenty of vehicles stuck in the water. Even school buses headed to the nearby elementary school have been stuck in flood waters of Wicker Road.
“Rosa Parks (Elementary School) when they know it gets flooded, they actually cancel the bus routes going in or out,” Forello said.
Forello’s neighborhood is right next to Interstate 69. She said she and her neighbors have long been told that the highway project would bring improvements to Wicker Road, and while there were improvements made, the upgrades on the road stop exactly where the flooding begins. She’s hoping city leaders will rescue her neighborhood from a preventable problem.
“I definitely and strongly encourage them to take a deep dive on how long we have been dealing with this and how many people it has affected,” Forello said.
