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Heavy rain Sunday night flooded parts of the city when the storm sewer system was unable to keep up with the downpour.

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People walk through water up over their knees. (contributed photo)

City Public Works Superintendent Jay Shanahan said the system works well, but simply can't cope with an extremely heavy rainfall.

"We can handle a fairly good storm, but when such a flash amount of water hits like that there, it can't drain off fast enough to get rid of it," he said.

In some cases, Shanahan, said the rain moves so fast it simply flows over the catch basin. In other places, it simply can't handle the volume.

"You get two or three inches of rain over a 24-hour period it has no trouble handling it. But what happens if you get a couple of inches of rain or an inch of rain in … about a 45 minute period … the system just surges to the top and just can't get rid of it fast enough." Shanahan said.

One place where the flooding was particularly bad was the parking lot at Waterford Green, where the water was high enough to reach the doors of vehicles. Little Branch's Lawrence Adams was parked there Sunday night by the AA building and he says his car was damaged when the water reached the back bumper of his car and seeped in around the doors of his 1993 Mercury Marquis.

"I got flooded real bad there and smell of sewage in my car is something wicked," he said.

Shanahan, however, said the smell in Adams car is not sewage.

"In your storm sewer system, you get stagnant water that will lay in it for a period of time and what happens is, when it surges, it comes out," he said, noting stagnant water can smell bad.

Adams says he has had his car looked at and is waiting to find out if it's a write-off. In the meantime, he is expecting his insurance company will provide a rental car for him. He said he'd like to see improvements to the city system to prevent this happening again.

"They spend all our tax dollars and make a damn mess of stuff. That's what they're doing, because its just a soup bowl down there," he said. "Putting that old statue out there — you'd think they'd pave the streets instead of stuff like that there. It's all right to live in the past, but we've got to live in the future."

Shanahan said crews were not needed in the parking area and once the rain stopped the system was able to drain off the water.