River communities dry out the day after the storm

By TOM KANE

RIVER VALLEY - Organic farmers Alice and Neal Fitzgerald, whose farm is on the flats beside the Delaware River in Cochecton, NY, lost 90 percent of their crops.

“The water was in our 500-year flood plain,” Alice said. “This is just amazing. We’ve seen nothing like it.”

“The crops are gone,” she said. “All the tools from our tool shed were lost when the waters knocked the shed over.”

They had to move their little chicks and other animals up to higher ground. “We’re still going to transport the animals to market this morning,” she said on Thursday, June 29.

The farm is a Community Supported Agriculture program, in which paying members receive a weekly bushel of crops during the growing season.

Up in Callicoon, NY, highway superintendent Bill Eschenberg directed his crew at the Delaware Youth Center to fill in the cavities that were gouged out of the grounds.

“This seems worse than the storm of last April,” he said.

Across the Callicoon bridge in Pennsylvania, homes in Tammany Flats were again swamped.

“I don’t know how bad it is in there,” said Tammany resident Victoria Johnson. “Our home was on high ground so the water didn’t reach us. I don’t think the others were very lucky.”

“I don’t know why people keep building down there after so many wash-outs,” said a Callicoon resident when he heard of the damage.

Al Henry, National Park Service chief ranger who headed the command center in Narrowsburg, said that the Roebling Bridge would be closed indefinitely.

“We don’t know if there was any damage, but we don’t want to take any chances with such an important historic structure,” Henry said. A crew from the Federal Highway Administration would have to examine it. “Debris was striking the abutments and the water rose to within one foot of the timber rafters,” he said.

Henry said the gauges that measured the water height at Callicoon and Barryville were flooded and were rendered useless. “We had to use our own judgment in gauging the height,” Henry said.

“Using my informal gauge, this flood rose to a height of 29.8 feet,” he said. “This is, of course, very unofficial.”

The exact height of the floodwaters would be announced some time in the future, he said.

At Skinners Falls, Landers Campground was completely inundated by the raging waters, which tore up much of the paved main road leading into the grounds and dug large holes in the ground surface.

“We moved everything out of the basement,” said campground manager Gale Schaffer. “The damage to the road and the grounds are the worst of it,” she said.

“I’ve lived here for 40 years and this is by far the worst storm I have even seen here,” said Cochecton resident Vincent Annunziata as he stood with his family overlooking the river at the Cochecton bend. “I don’t know how much more of this we can take,” he said.