6/27/2006 11:36 AM

[Phone rings]

Hello

Hi, it’s me [Ali]

Hi there.

Hey I’m starting to send people home; they have closed the village due to flooding.

Really, it’s flooding down there?

Yeah, Delaware St, North, Townsend … We are trying to move equipment in case the water comes into the clinic.

Do you need any help?

If you have time, yeah I could use some help; it’s just me and the building owner.

I’ll be down in a bit.

About 20 minutes later I start walking to the clinic. On my way I see a USGS truck driving around. I have to pick my way around; all the streets on that end of the village are flooded.

What should we do with the Pathfinder; we can’t get it home at this point?

We could park it over at the hospital.

Okay, I’ll go move it and walk back over here.

When I get back Ali says, “I really need to go over and treat patients.” I talk her out of it. The water has risen even higher since I got there and it is starting to lap at the door of the clinic. I’m afraid if she goes to treat patients she won’t be able to get home.

Throughout the afternoon, we periodically checked the basement. We have had so much rain there is a steady trickle of water coming through our laid stone foundation. This happens from time to time whenever the ground gets saturated, but it always just drains or dries about as fast as it comes in.

All afternoon we kept getting these periods of incredibly heavy rain followed by brief respites. Ali was nervous about the clinic, it flooded in 1996, and we were sure it was going to flood again. It was just a question of how bad. We weren’t too worried about our house; we had it on good authority that it didn’t have any issue in the ’96 flood. The result of which is that we didn’t give it much thought.

6/27/2006 4:30 PM

The tap quits working. We set buckets up outside to start collecting rain water for flushing the toilets, etc.

6/27/2006 6:00 PM

Around 6pm the rain finally let up. Ali and I headed back down to the clinic to see how it faired. There was no standing water, just a nice layer of silt and mud. It appeared the clinic had seen 12-18 inches of water at some point during the afternoon. Things were moved around; the exercise equipment had been submerged; the ultrasound machines were ruined, they had been on carts which toppled. I was mad that we had left so many things down low that could have easily been moved.

We walked around a bit and marveled at the village. There are three brooks that run through our village and feed into the West Branch of the Delaware River. The Delaware parallels the main street and it not very far off of it. We live near East Brook at the North edge of the village. East Brook was at capacity and was spilling over at the South end near where it feeds into the Delaware. The middle brook had overflowed near the North end of the village and was spilling into streets and basements and running all the way down Townsend St. We didn’t have access to the West side of the village, and had no idea what was going on with 3rd Brook.

As we were walking around, I thought the worst was over; the rain had stopped, and the water had already drained out of the clinic. I was feeling bad for all these folks who were going to be pumping out their basements and having to deal with the cleanup.

Karen’s (the per diem office coordinator) car got stuck as she was trying to get home earlier that day. It was partially submerged in water at the end of North St. She had left a window down, and I thought, “what a mess this is going to be when the water drains.”

We went back home and watched a few episodes of Gilmore Girls, which has been my guilty pleasure of late.

6/27/2006 11:00 PM

The rain starts again — fast, hard, and steady.

6/28/2006 2:50 AM

Ali turned the fan off, and it woke me up. She said, “Rain was coming in through the fan, so I took it out of the window. I checked the basement about 2:30 and it was still fine.” I laid there for a few minutes trying to convince myself that I really don’t have to go to the bathroom.

6/28/2006 2:58 AM

As I am using the bathroom, I look out the window and notice a light on at the next door neighbors. I think to myself, “that is odd;” the thought sort of floats groggily around in my head. I am about to go back to bed, but on a whim I take a closer look. I see their basement light on too, I think, “They must be getting water in their basement. I am sure glad ours is staying dry.”

Then I see it. With my heart pounding I exclaim, “Oh .. My .. God! Oh My God, you have got to come see this!” After standing there for a moment in shock, I jump into action. What I saw was water had completely surrounded the neighbor’s house and was flowing into our yard as well, rushing like a river down our driveway. Our brand new Subaru was sitting there and the water was lapping at it. My first priority was to move it before it was too late. By the time I got to the car water was almost up to the door. Luckily our driveway has two ways out, because one end was completely submerged and there was no going that way.

When I get back in the house, Ali asks, “Where did you put the car?” “I just parked it at the edge of the driveway. We can move it again if we need to.” Our next thought was should we go help the elderly neighbors, but a few things of ours had to be handled first. I turned my attention to the basement. Early this year I built a relay rack out of wood, and I keep servers, switches, routers, etc down there. I also had a few tools lying around, as well as molding and some stuff I had been working on for the master bedroom. For the next 40 minutes I was hoofing stuff up to the first floor; pointing out things that were of particular value; and asking Ali to take them to the second floor. The entire time the water kept rising around our house. While I was working on the basement the neighbor’s lights went out and we knew they were going to be okay. Just as I was taking the last load of stuff up, muddy water breached the basement for the first time, and somehow I knew the basement would be filled with water in a matter of minutes. While I was working on the basement I asked Ali to grab my hiking backpack. I have most of the essentials in there, sleeping bag, pad, stove, pots, etc. I am really only lacking a water filter. I had no idea how long we’d be gone; all I knew is that we were being displaced, and I wanted to be prepared. I made a quick pass through the house, and then it was back to the basement one last time to shut everything down. I had to wade through water to get to the electrical panel and the boiler.

While I focused on the basement, Ali got stuff together (food and clothes). The water had started surrounding the house and had risen enough that she went and moved the car a second time across the street to higher ground.

6/28/2006 3:54 AM

We were out the front door and into shin to knee deep water as we made our way about 10 yards to the road, which hadn’t been over run.

We were on the verge of tears as we walked away from the house; water was everywhere; and we had no idea if we were going to have a home by dawn.

We found a neighbor on higher ground who was taking refugees and we spent a little time there. They still had Internet access, so I asked if I could use their computer, and I hastily shot an email off to my boss to let him know I would not be at work the following morning.

Our house flooded last night. We are currently displaced, and it is not clear what is going on. I will be in touch as soon as I know more.

I stood outside, just looking down Brook St. The water was up to the first floor on many houses. There was a truck with its lights still on, stuck, from a failed attempt to move it. Many cars were still about, and being over run by water. One house still had it lights on; the owner hadn’t thought to shut the power off before fleeing.

One thing was clear, nobody expected this. We would later find out that this was considered a 500 year flood by the USGS.

6/28/2006 6:00 AM

The water started receding, and we were able to get back into our house through the front door. We took stock; the water didn’t breech the first floor. The basement had 27 inches of water at the height. Water came to within an inch of the breaker panel; the boiler, washer, and drier all sustained damage. We took this opportunity to grab a few more things. The weather prediction for the day was for more rain, and we didn’t know if we were going to have to go through this again. We decided to try and get a little rest, and agreed to sleep in shifts.

6/28/2006 10:00 AM

So far the predicated rain had yet to materialize. We had no more water in our yard. I decided to turn the breaker panel back on so we’d have power. I didn’t want everything in the fridge to spoil. At that point we only had a few inches of water in the basement. I was shocked at how fast it had drained.

6/28/2006 12:00 PM

Our next priority was to figure out how to get drinking water, we only had enough to get through the day. We started walking around the village to see what we could learn. We were faced with complete and total devastation and it was very overwhelming. We stumbled across water being given out at the Town Hall (courtesy of Home Depot in Oneonta); we took four gallons and quickly headed home to alert all of our neighbors.

Over the next couple of days we walked around the village looking for supplies and surveying the damage, utterly unable to comprehend what we saw. When we were finally able to get to the end of North again, we found that Karen’s car was completely gone; like so many other things, it got washed away in the flood.

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