To beat the Ohio River flood, this Kentucky restaurant preemptively flooded itself
A Louisville-area restaurant owner has gone viral for his unique approach to fending off dirty floodwater from his Ohio Riverfront restaurant: fighting water with water.
Andrew Masterson, co-owner of Captain’s Quarters Riverside Grille in Prospect, flooded his own restaurant with clean water to ward off the mud and detritus mixed in with the flooded Ohio River.
A video tour he filmed of the establishment Sunday went viral, circulating on Facebook where he initially posted and even making the evening news on CNN. Donning a pair of waders, Masterson gives a grand tour of the flooded restaurant, pointing out the stark difference between the clear water on the inside of a set of tall windows and the dirty floodwater on the outside.
“It just keeps the muddy water out. It makes the clean up much, much easier. Now it doesn’t always work if we get a broken window,” Masterson said in the video. “It just keeps it calm. And what little dirty water does get in here, it just kind of settles to the ground.”
The crew removed kitchen equipment and electric panels before initiating their flood scheme. Masterson explained that he and employees used faucets and a well water pump to fill the restaurant with about 6 feet of clean water.
At one point in the video, Masterson pans to members of the staff having fun floating in tubes. One of them jokes that he must have accidentally left the sink running.
The video has provided levity in a moment of anxiety and sadness across the Commonwealth. Four people have died from injuries related to flooding from unprecedented levels of rain, including 9-year-old Gabriel Andrews in Frankfort, who was swept away while traveling to his school bus stop on a dark morning.
Masterson said the biggest reason for using the flood tactic was to pay his workers as soon as possible. He said that whenever cleanup begins, he’ll pay them to do much of the work.
“We will use all of those guys when it’s time to clean up, and we’ll pay them as well as we can. We’ll be working tirelessly to get back open for all of our fans and all of our friends,” Masterson said. “It is a huge interruption to our business. It’s a significant cost, but we know it comes with the territory of being on the river.”
On Sunday afternoon, when the video was posted, the Ohio River was running at 62 feet. It’s projected to crest around 68 feet on Wednesday, right between the marks where Masterson said they could withstand flooding and where they’d run into trouble.
“We’ll be fine as long as it doesn’t get much higher than 4 or 5 more feet. If it does get higher than four or 5 more feet, then it’s a different story,” Masterson said. “Five more feet isn’t going to be as devastating as eight more feet, which is one of the predictions.”
