People evacuated due to flooding in Frenchtown Township

FRENCHTOWN TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WJBK) - The strong winds and rain caused severe flooding in one Monroe County community Sunday. The crashing waves flooded home after home along Lake Erie's Grand Beach in Frenchtown Township. 

“My daughter came in and said, 'Mommy, there’s water in the living room.' We were still asleep. We got up and there was probably, six to eight inches of water all the way through my house,” Lisa Norton said.

Lisa Norton picked up her 7-year-old daughter, their cat and some clothes and ran for the car. She got her family to safety, but says she lost her home along the way. 

“Everything we have is ruined and gone," she said. “The president of the association just told me the break wall failed and collapsed so that's why it's flooded so badly."

The fire chief says part of the break wall did collapse, but it’s the fierce winds that’s causing the flooding. 

Firefighters in Frenchtown say some homes have as much as four feet of water, and as many as 75 homes have been impacted. First responders have been evacuating people since Sunday morning.

"I put a stake in my yard at 8 o’clock and it came up 3 feet in two hours. Between 8 and noon it was coming up pretty significantly,” Bob Lambert said. “I've been in this neighborhood since 2001, and we've never had this kind of water in here."

“If the storm pumps are on and they're draining the beach to keep the water from flooding and it’s still rising, that’s a lot of water. I’ve never seen it this high,” Matt Elliott said.

Norton says she'll never see it this high again. She says she and her family won't be back.

“We'll move and start over in another house somewhere else. I can’t and I don’t want to go through this again. This is absolutely awful,” she said.