"I had a feeling it was flooded, because it was raining so hard." Walter Parnham was just one of the thousands of drivers affected after a morning rain shower flooded the Downtown Tunnel, stopping traffic for over an hour.
"Ain't no way the tunnel should be flooded when it rains like that; there should be a way it drains out."
VDOT officials say 3 of the 8 pumps that drain water from the tunnel malfunctioned at the same time causing 4 inches of standing water inside the west bound tube.
"If you watch the news, they tell you about potential rainfall. It's something VDOT needs to be prepared for. Every time it comes up, VDOT always has an excuse," said Edward Parker, a Portsmouth resident.
With commuters upset about the hour long back up, NewsChannel 3 went to VDOT's regional operations manager, Dwayne Cook, to get some answers.
"I apologize for the people stuck in traffic, but the systems we put in place operated as designed. I think crews and the staff responded very well," said Cook.
After the July 2009 flooding of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, VDOT installed high water alarms and 24/7 monitoring at all area tunnels. Cook says those changes helped make Tuesday's pump failure go as smoothly as possible.
"Crews were on site when the alarm went off at 7:38 a.m., and we dispatched them at 7:42 a.m. They were enroute looking at the system at that point," said Cook.
But drivers who sat through the mess still aren't happy with the explanation.
"If it worked the way it was supposed to, we would have been flowing through there," said Parnham.
"I don't wanna hear about failure, I just want them to fix the problem," said Parker.
VDOT is still trying to figure out why the pumps didn't automatically engage when the water levels started rising. They say the system was just inspected last Tuesday and no problems were found. Once they know what happened, if there is a way to improve, VDOT says they will take action to do so.
