Residents still missing a week after the flood

The television cameras are gone; the recovery continues

By FRITZ MAYER

ROSCOE, NY — “You know it’s serious when four television crews from the city show up,” said a Roscoe businessman. That was the morning of Wednesday, June 20. The crews were waiting for word from state police about the progress of the rescue effort because access to the disaster scene had been closed to the media. Three live trucks from the city drove in a caravan up Route 206 to try to get footage of the disaster aftermath; all three were turned back by state police. By Thursday at noon, the number of television crews in Roscoe had risen to more than a dozen.

The basic facts were known by most of the local residents on Wednesday morning. The previous night, on June 19, up to eight inches of rain fell in about three hours on a very small area north of Roscoe. The resulting flash flood washed away homes, cars and human beings, and left the area in ruins.

The damage was concentrated in a valley on an eight-mile stretch of Route 206, just across the Sullivan County line in the Town of Colchester in Delaware County. State police in Sydney were, therefore, in charge of the rescue and recovery operation.

Local residents knew on Wednesday morning that 81-year-old Fred Shutts and his 79-year-old wife, Marjorie, had been washed away by the flood, along with an elderly woman named Gertrude Melman. Local residents knew that there was at least one more person still unaccounted for.

State police would not commit to any figure; they would say only that “several” people were unaccounted for.

At a news conference Wednesday evening, a television reporter asked New York State Police Major Kevin Molinari, “Does several mean more than five or less than 10?”

“Several means several,” Molinari replied.

A day later, another state police spokesman, captain Rodney Campbell, said they could not be precise with a figure because a number of vehicles were caught on the road when the wall of water came crashing through. It was not clear if some had left the area and survived, or been swept away. He said hundreds of emergency workers and volunteers were working to find any additional victims.

As utility workers struggled to mend power lines, crews from the Delaware and Sullivan county departments of public works struggled to patch the torn and broken roadways. Volunteers from a dozen fire and rescue companies searched for victims; journalists also tried to do their jobs.

“Have there been other recent floods that have claimed victims?” asked a television reporter from the city.

Molinari said, “About a year ago, we lost a truck driver in a flood not far from here.”

“Are you talking about Livingston Manor?” she responded.

“I’m talking about Binghamton,” he said.

No one spoke up to add that 15-year-old Jamie Bertholf had died in Livingston Manor in the June 28, 2006 flood.

Ultimately state police officials gave into repeated requests from the press, and allowed one pool video photographer and one pool still photographer to be escorted into the disaster zone to collect images of the devastation, and distribute them to the news outlets present. Television viewers in Binghamton saw the same video as television viewers in New York City.

The Channel Four reporter told his camera crew that the network, NBC, might want a report for the network “Nightly News.” He wasn’t sure, though, because 14 more U.S. soldiers had been killed in Iraq, and that news was taking a lot of airtime.

On Thursday afternoon, state police confirmed what the local people had known more than 24 hours earlier: two trailers and a home had been completely washed away by the flood. They said that Fred Shutts’ body had been found.

On Friday, police said the affected stretch of Route 206 would not be open again to civilian traffic until at least July 1 and possibly later. They announced that Marjorie Shutts’ body had been found.

By Saturday morning, the out-of-town media had departed.

As of June 26, emergency workers were still looking for Melman and Barbara Clark Cooper of Hankins.