Water Damage Restoration in O'Hara Township

We do, from up the river. Un-Flood-It has run out of Tarentum since December 2009, owned by Brian Marra, who also owns the plumbing company 1-Tom-Plumber Pittsburgh. Our technicians are IICRC certified, and we carry PA Home Improvement Contractor License #PA080868. Water, sewage, and mold are our whole trade. We do not sell fire restoration, rebuilds, or plumbing repair, so our drying advice never pads a construction bid.

O'Hara touches Shaler on the west, Harmar, Oakmont, and Verona on the east, and Sharpsburg, Aspinwall, and Blawnox along the river. Our trucks already cover flash flood cleanup in Fox Chapel, creek flooding over in Shaler Township, and water damage repair down in Pittsburgh. You can see every town along the river we reach on one page.

Start with the creek. Squaw Run, renamed Sycamore Run in September 2022, drains the hills through O'Hara and Fox Chapel and empties into the Allegheny River in the township. Stony Camp Run and Glade Run feed it. When a storm parks over those hills, the creek rises fast and takes the low roads with it.

On July 2, 2018, about an hour and a half of hard rain did exactly that. Vehicles were trapped on Squaw Run Road, and the county Swift Water Rescue team helped Foxwall EMS pull people out. O'Hara and Fox Chapel were the two hardest-hit communities. The creek ripped apart the parking lot of Nancetta's Ristorante, Old Freeport Road was buried in mud and closed, and Fox Chapel Stone and Supply took on about three feet of water. The township declared a state of emergency. Route 28 closed in both directions for a rockslide and flooding.

It happened again on July 11, 2019. More than two inches of rain fell, Kittanning Pike flooded for the second time in a week, and O'Hara declared another state of emergency. One resident held onto another car to keep from being swept away until firefighters pulled her out. PennDOT closed Freeport Road between Lewis Avenue and Powers Run Road. Railroad Street, Larimer Avenue, and Calmwood Road all ran with muddy water.

The river adds the slow kind of flood. NOAA's gauge on the Allegheny River at Sharpsburg Lock and Dam, right at O'Hara's border, puts flood stage at 21 feet. The river hit 22.1 feet in September 2004 from the leftovers of Hurricane Ivan. It hit 22.9 feet in January 1996 and 26.9 feet in June 1972. In March 1936 the Allegheny crested at 46 feet in Pittsburgh. The riverfront streets along Freeport Road sit in that reach.

The township's own sewer page explains the problem. Most of O'Hara's sanitary sewer system was built in the 1940s and 1950s. In wet weather, extra water sneaks into those pipes through cracked lines and illegal downspout connections. The flow exceeds what the pipes can carry to ALCOSAN. The system was built with overflow structures to dump that excess into streams before it backs up into basements. The Clean Water Act now bans those overflows, so all 83 ALCOSAN communities, O'Hara included, have to fix them.

O'Hara has been lining old sewer lines with ALCOSAN grants: 5,535 feet in 2020, 7,100 feet in 2021, and nearly 2,400 feet along Parkview Boulevard, Linwood Drive, and Spring Grove Road in 2025. Until every street is done, a hard rain can still push water up a basement floor drain. That water is contaminated. Stay out of it. Our crew handles sewer backup cleanup for O'Hara basements: extraction, removal of what cannot be saved, disinfection, then drying. If the loss sat wet for a day or two, mold has started, and we remediate it on the same job.

We run around the clock, weekends and holidays included. From Tarentum the truck heads down Route 28 and Freeport Road into the township. Fox Chapel Road, Kittanning Pike, Powers Run Road, Delafield Road, and the riverfront around RIDC Park are all on our regular route. Your mail may say Pittsburgh 15238, same as the township office on Fox Chapel Road. You are still O'Hara to us.

Water wicks up drywall by the hour and soaks into subfloor and framing. Pull it out in the first hours and the material is saved. Wait a day and it gets replaced. That is the whole case for calling the crew already in your valley.

We do not pack up when the floor feels dry. We pack up when the meters say so. We map the moisture, including what is hiding in walls and under floors. We extract the standing water, set air movers and dehumidifiers, sanitize where the loss calls for it, and check readings every day. A final inspection confirms the structure is back to safe moisture levels. A floor can feel fine to your hand while the subfloor still reads soaked, and that trapped water is what buckles hardwood a month later.

The paperwork runs alongside the pumps. We photograph and log the loss as we work and bill your insurance company directly. Your policy and the cause of the loss decide what is covered. You choose who does the work. It is your claim.