CINCINNATI — A school in Hyde Park was evacuated Thursday morning after a gas main had been struck, causing gas to leak, according to officials.

The Cincinnati Fire Department said the Springer School was evacuated after a truck backed into and struck a nearby gas main around 8 a.m. Thursday. Once the truck hit the main, firefighters evacuated the students and staff of the school, as well as people in a nearby apartment complex.

Firefighters were able to shut the gas line off, and officials called Duke Energy (Gas) to the scene to test the air quality to make sure it was safe.

Officials said the people who were evacuated would be able to return to the school or their homes before noon.

CINCINNATI — A recent string of heavy rain earlier this summer had Jenn Bastos feeling like a fish out of water for seven weeks while she ran her store out of an adjacent building due to extensive flood damage. Now, with the remnants of Hurricane Ida making their way into the Tri-State, she worries she might be in store for some deja vu.

"Every time it rains, I get nervous," said Bastos, who owns Castle House on Edwards Road near Hyde Park Square. It's an area she said sees more and more flooding each year.

Hyde Park isn't alone: City Councilman David Mann called upon City Council's Neighborhoods Committee Monday to discuss how hundred-year flooding — that is, flooding so heavy that it historically would only occur every century or so — is becoming more and more common in the region.

"We had, at the peak of it, I was told about 12 inches of water in the store," Bastos said of the flooding that forced her business to relocate in July. She said she was lucky that she was able to move temporarily into a nearby storefront after the last round of heavy storms, but said the cost of repeated flooding threatens a lot of small businesses like hers.

Kyle Robinson owns Peace and Love Little Donuts just a few doors from Castle House. He worries that, with the next big rain, his business could be next.

"(The flooding in July) stopped two doors before us," Robinson said. "And literally across the street, everywhere was closed; there was debris all over the streets. We have business insurance that covers stuff like that, but it’s still the time down, cleaning up, being closed. It doesn’t cover fully all that. To see it happen so close, it's definitely scary."

READ MORE: Hyde Park residents blame MSD for sewage, flood damage

It's an issue Cincinnati City Council's Neighborhoods Committee discussed Monday, looking at the city's sewer and stormwater systems' ability to handle sudden downpours of heavy rain.

In a motion filed last month, shortly after the heavy rain in early July, Mann called on the administration to develop a "long-term plan for addressing the reality that hundred-year floods are now a regular challenge for our community."

Mann elaborated Monday: "It’s not clear to me that our system, which wasn’t built to handle it, can handle it," he said.

Mann said the city faces a unique challenge created by the coalescence of aging infrastructure and increasingly volatile weather events as a result of climate change.

The most immediate solution, Mann said, is to untangle how the city and the county oversee the Metropolitan Sewer District.

"We have spent a lot of money to go a long way towards separating stormwater and sanitary sewage," Mann said. "That's not the only thing we're talking about. We're talking about the capacity of the system when there's a big rainstorm. And as big rainstorms occur more often, we don't have any choice."

Mann's motion calls on the city administration to develop a plan or report to address the issue, but the timeline for that plan remained unclear Monday.

Meanwhile, as City Council considers the best path forward, business and property owners like Bastos and Robinson are left waiting.

"At some point, someone has to do something, and we have to step things up," Bastos said. "There's a point where businesses can't continue to operate. It's just not worth it."

CINCINNATI —

North High Brewing in Hyde Park Square officially opened its doors to business last Friday.

The successful turnout amid a pandemic was just one surprise, and the number of job applications, yet another.

"Our staff is very small and the amount of applicants we got was overwhelmingly large, so it was very hard to pick the staff that we picked," General Manager Ryan Peirce said.

A sign of the times, well over 100 applications for this 13 employee business.

"There are people that have been laid off all over Cincinnati, not even in the restaurant industry that have applied, and I even hired some of them," Peirce said.

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the restaurant community for almost a year now.

According to preliminary data by the department of job and family services, Ohio's Leisure and Hospitality Industry lost 9,200 jobs in December and about 125,000 over the past year.

Like North High Brewing, Lucy Blue Pizza in Anderson Township is also new, opening just three weeks ago.

Owner Jim Thompson is happy Gov. Dewine recently moved curfew back to 11 o'clock.

"My business is based on late night," Thompson said.

Like so many businesses, he had to close his two downtown locations when the pandemic first hit. He's finding more success in the suburbs.

"Out here in Anderson I knew there was lots of families," Thompson said. "We have had great success with people calling in and picking up food, it's been beyond our expectations."

CINCINNATI — When heavy rain starts, so does anxiety.

Just ask Hyde Park resident Adam Bankovich.

"We went in our basement and, sure enough, the storm drain had exploded, hitting the ceiling, which is about 9 feet ceiling down there, and then it just kept bubbling up. Shop vac was full," he told WCPO Thursday.

Bankovich said it's not the first time rainwater and sewage have overflowed into his home. Last year, it flooded three times and once before that in 2016.

"It's super frustrating," he said. "The claims process is just hours, weeks, months of our time that we can't get back."

According to the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, the agency received more than 400 reports of "possible sewer backs" in the last 24 hours since Wednesday night's torrential rains.

Nine of those were on Astoria Avenue, an area with a history of flooding.

MSD had already installed sewer-backup prevention at two homes on that block, with eight more — including the Bankovich's — still in line.

But he said he's been waiting for more than a year.

"It's frustrating; it's maddening," he said. "Everyone is doing their best, and we're just living through it, but every single time it happens it's invasive to our home and our comfort to our home."

A few blocks over, resident Nick McKee said the feeling is mutual.

"The anxiety we feel from the second there is rain that is absurdly heavy is there constantly, and then it's a mad dash to get as many things up out of the basement as we can," he said.

McKee said his sewer drain has backed up into his yard, rising about two feet, and his basement and garage are also flooded.

He said he wants a permanent fix.

"What they have with respect to the claims system is a Band-Aid instead of a real solution," he said. "And if you pay the claims, it may be cheaper than the billions of dollars it costs to fix it.

"But maybe the billions of dollars it costs to fix it is what they need to do."