"Hundreds left homeless" -THR Article

(Middletown, NY) Times Herald Record

http://www.recordonline.com/archive/...06/flood06.htm

Hundreds left homeless
Cost of floods expected to reach tens of millions

By Brendan Scott
Times Herald-Record
bscott@th-record.com

As residents returned to silt-strewn yards and water-logged homes yesterday, it quickly became clear the damage from this weekend's floods would cost tens of millions of dollars and leave scores of mid-Hudson residents homeless.
In Deerpark, at the nexus of the Neversink and Delaware rivers, officials expected to condemn 160 homes. The floods caused at least $24 million in damage to that town alone, an Orange County spokesman said.
Upstream, in Sullivan County, high waters exceeding 100-year flood levels caused $16.5 million in damage to roads, bridges and other public properties.
"Just in public infrastructure alone, we're looking at millions," said Bruce Kirkpatrick, Ulster County's deputy director of emergency management. "And the human cost ... How do you measure the human cost?"
American Red Cross workers across the region were trying to do just that as they helped find motel rooms for scores of people unable to return home.
Officials hoped to get a true measure of the devastation after state and federal disaster assessment teams toured flooded areas, which stretched over two dozen counties in southern New York and western New Jersey.
Gov. George Pataki officially declared Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties disaster areas, allowing the first state disaster inspectors to arrive yesterday. They surveyed Myers Grove, a one-time summer community of bungalows and trailers in Deerpark, which was among the areas hardest hit.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has been occupied with a mammoth terrorism drill, expected backup teams from Texas to reach local flood zones today.
Damage assessments must be done before the governor can ask the president to declare the area a federal disaster area. Doing so would clear the way for federal disaster relief and allow residents to apply for low-interest loans to rebuild homes.
In the meantime, officials said it would take weeks or even months to repair washed-out roads and bridges. As road crews scrambled to open once-flooded roads, it became increasingly clear this weekend's floods were going into the record books.
The Neversink River reached the highest level recorded in Godeffroy since the U.S. Geological Survey began taking measurements there 68 years ago. The river crested just over its 100-year flood level – a measurement that federal officials set based on prior high-water years.
The Delaware River in Port Jervis also came close to its 100-year flood level as determined by FEMA. The flooding was less remarkable for the Wallkill River, where waters reached 15-year flood levels.
The Neversink exceeded levels recorded in the late summer and early fall of 1955, when a potent series of hurricanes and coastal storms pounded eastern New York. The Delaware also flooded in mid-August of that year after hurricanes Connie and Diane struck the region in a single week.
"We had five days of solid rain, the kind of rain you look at and say, 'That can't last for long – it's too heavy,'" said 92-year-old Dorothea Solomon, who was Port Jervis' deputy director of civil defense in those days.
"It was so wet, the ground couldn't hold it, the same thing that happened this time."
Of course, the water-rich lowlands of places like Deerpark, Ellenville and Livingston Manor have flooded before. But the latest one has left them gun shy.
Even as the people of Livingston Manor were digging out from the second flood to hit their northern Sullivan County hamlet in the past six months, they were preparing for the next one.
Carol Clancy, who runs My Friends' Place day-care center, was buying new rugs to replace the ones ruined by the muddy water that reached door knobs. She chose dark green.
"And ones that I can roll up in a hurry for the next time," she said.
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Reporters Ramsey al-Rikabi, Jessica Gardner, Jeremiah Horrigan and Steve Israel contributed to this report.
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