Several local businesses cleaning up after concentrated flooding in Bluewell

BLUEWELL, WV (WVNS) — After a night of heavy rains, local businesses in Bluewell, West Virginia began taking stock of the damage done to their shops.

A few of the things you’ll notice heading into Bluewell are standing water on 52 and a bright orange High Water sign.

From there it will be large puddles in parking lots and businesses with doors open cleaning up the mess.

Athletes Closet, a sporting goods and athletic novelty store right next to the Bluewell Volunteer Fire Department, is one of these businesses.

Owner, Annetta McPeak, said she first knew things were going to be bad late Saturday evening when she saw a photo on Facebook.

“When I saw the fire department, I could see the edge of the store, and I thought, “Oh, no, we probably have water in it.” And we did.” said McPeak.

McPeak said when she arrived at her shop Sunday morning, there was an inch of standing water in the back of her shop.

She said that clean up is slow going because as they pump water out, more comes up from where it settled underneath the tiles.

Luckily, McPeak said that none of her merchandise was damaged in the flooding. Another business in Ameli’s Plaza is Shadows Tattoo Company.

Timothy “Timmy” Hanlin, a piercer for the shop, said they got lucky.

“All the rugs were like, squishy. I was like, “Aw, man, this can’t be good.” So then I just evaluated like all the puddles and seeing if there was any damage or anything and just began to clean up.” said Hanlin.

Hanlin said that there was not an awful amount of standing water and that clean up should go smoothly.

One salon was not so lucky, however. Hello, Gorgeous Salon on Bluewell School Road was hit very hard by the flooding.

Owner Terah Poff was out of town, but luckily had some dedicated employees and clients to come help get the salon cleaned up. Destany Boyles is a nail technician at the salon and said clean-up has been a struggle.

“There’s a lot of standing water. There’s carpet in two of the rooms, so it’s pretty bad back there. We’re trying to shop vac it and get it up as quick as we can.” said Boyles.

All of these businesses will need some time to clean up the damage done to them by the flooding.

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