TRR photo by Tom Kane Steve Pajka is pictured watching an American disaster unfold at the TV department of the Honesdale K-Mart. (Click for larger image)

An American tragedy touches the valley

By TOM KANE and DAVID HULSE

SULLIVAN & WAYNE COUNTIES — Tuesday’s disaster sent many valley residents scrambling for telephones to check on friends and relatives or to try and volunteer their help.

Narrowsburg Realtor Diane Butler was at work, worrying about two police officers in her family when she got a call this morning. A woman, who was to see property on Wednesday, was calling in tears. She was on her way to try and find several missing relatives working at the World Trade Center, and as people will sometimes remember the most unusual things under stress, she remembered to call and cancel her appointment.

Butler also told of another friend in Bloomfield, NJ, across the Hudson from the disaster, who was stuffing towels under window sashes to keep the fine dust from the center from infiltrating her home.

The woman’s daughter, visiting in Jordan, had called home terrified, telling her mother that “everyone here is talking about viruses in the water.”

Marie Wingert, at Fleet Bank in Narrowsburg, said Tuesday afternoon that many of her customers came into the bank expressing concern about loved ones employed inside the trade center or elsewhere in downtown Manhattan. “Calls are coming in,” she said. “People are walking across the bridges and getting home.”

Many routines fell apart. Post offices and local federal offices suddenly closed and long distance phone service became a taped apology for many people. No planes were taking off from any airport nationwide. The New York Stock Exchange stopped trading and primaries across New York State were postponed. All major league baseball teams suspended play.

The impact was far-reaching, and very immediate. There was no gym class for Honesdale seniors this morning as teacher Gordon West was called to active duty in Pennsylvania National Guard. Governor Pataki also called out the New York National Guard, as Sullivan West tenth grader Ashley Swingle found out. “My dad got called into the Army,” she said.

Fifteen American Red Cross (ARC) volunteers from Sullivan County left Monticello a few hours after the World Trade Center collapse to assist victims of the tragedy. Betty Popovich, Director of the Sullivan County chapter of the Red Cross, left even earlier, on her way to a routine ARC meeting in Manhattan. Popovich heard radio reports along the way and thought it a “War of the Worlds” hoax. Then she saw the George Washington Bridge…and it was empty. “It was really eerie,” she said.

Driving a Red Cross vehicle, Popovich was passed through bridge roadblocks and went to ARC headquarters in Manhattan to offer her assistance. Strangely, at 11:00 a.m., Popovich described a relatively normal scene outside her midtown window, with people walking their dogs and entering supermarkets. Traffic didn’t seem heavy.

But the truth came back with reports of people who had gone to the scene of the disaster downtown and returned with vehicles covered with heavy black dust and debris. “It was just devastating,” she said.

	TRR photo by Tom Kane Pictured Red Cross volunteers at Sullivan County ARC in Mongaup Valley assisted local residents who offered their services in coping with the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington Tuesday. (Click for larger image)

Residents of Wayne County will be donating blood through the Wayne/Pike Red Cross this Friday from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Lemnitzer Armory on Tryon Street in Honesdale.

The Sullivan Red Cross will set up blood donor sites in a day or two, according to ARC officials.

“People have been calling all morning and our phones have not stopped ringing,” said Red Cross volunteer Joanne Gerow at  county headquarters on Rte 17B in Mongaup. “It’s overwhelming.”

“We had about 15 registered nurses call in the last two hours to volunteer their services to the city,” said volunteer Jane Sarno.

A number of fire departments and school districts called to volunteer their facilities when blood stations will be set up in Sullivan.