Storm

It was only a minor hurricane, AIDS first of the season, losing steam before it crossed the Florida coast. Hurricane winds yielding rapidly to rain [music] as it headed north toward Georgia and the Carolinas and downgraded even before it reached the Appalachians into nothing more than a tropical storm. Next day over North Carolina, [music] the storm picks up speed, intensity, crosses Virginia's great [music] dismal swamp, and then sweeps out to sea at Norfol. Gone and ready to be forgotten. Then [music] Agnes surprises, changes her mind. Suddenly, she loops inland again over New York State, meets a low pressure front from Lake Erie, begins swinging like a giant wheel with Pennsylvania as the hub, and torrential [music] rains start falling. [music] From the flood forecasting center at Harrisburg, widespread small stream flooding is expected tonight throughout the Sesuana basin, including the Juniata and West Branch. Main channels are well below flood levels, and no mainstream flooding is expected at this time. 90 mi north at the Lern County Courthouse in Wiltsboro, three men meet in the emergency operating center. General Frank Townen, the county civil defense director. John McCormack, his deputy, some street flooding, and their executive director, Nick Such, just small streams. Uh, do you picture any special problems? Only the levy at Plymouth. We still have a gap down there from the sewer line collapse. Okay, let's get it filled in. Now, you know, I've got to go down to that memorial service on the Jersey Shore tomorrow night, but I'll keep checking back with you. 200 m south in the nation's capital, workmen are sandbagging the Washington Monument grounds [music] against a rising battoic. Just across the river in Northern Virginia, flash flooding on small streams is beginning to drive hundreds [music] from their homes. Fires are breaking out with firemen often unable to reach them [music] in the morning. Flood Bulletin from the US Weather Service at Harrisburg. Thursday, June 22nd. Severe local flooding is occurring in the Harrisburg area. Heavy rain [music] is continuing and near disaster conditions are developing locally. Many families are being evacuated. Driving is hazardous and will continue so into this morning. On his way to Jersey, a worried Frank Townend stops on the road, checks back with Nick Such. It's getting critical, General. Harrisburg is predicting a 24 ft crest for tomorrow, and it could get worse. We're expecting at least 5 in of rain. Okay, Nick. Uh, I'll come back. Um, got the 109th alerted for that patrol on the dikes. And uh you better get in plenty of coffee and sandwiches. In Virginia, rivers are rising rapidly toward pool flood. On the old CNO canal just north of Washington, two youngsters decide to go sightseeing in a canoe, are swept away into a grove of trees. Rescue workers fire a line across the stream, begin trying to pull them to safety. Tighten up that line. He's being dragged under. Get him out. Come on. Pull. The uh the power won't make it through the trees, but the forest penetrator will. Flood bulletin for 9:30 p.m. Thursday, June 22nd. Record or near record stages are being forecast through the entire Sescuana River Valley. To Wanda, Pennsylvania 25.8 ft and rising. Wilsbury 20.6 ft and rising. Sunbury 26.2 ft and rising. By evening, Frank Townend is back in Wilsboro. His entire staff mobilized for emergency duty at county courthouse. With them, newscaster Dave Dosmo serving as liaison between civil defense and the local broadcasting stations. Now reporting fulltime on the growing crisis. A dyke in Plymouth that was never quite repaired after some mine subsidiences causing very bad problems there at 11:00. General, the gap in the levy can't be raised above 32 ft. That's serious. The forecast now is for 34T. That means we have to evacuate the people in Plymouth. John, here's what I want you to do. Go down to Plymouth and check with Burns and with George Davenport on the evacuation. If you're in Plymouth or in those lowlying areas, get out now. Plymouth must be evacuated. You do have time. Don't panic, but please leave now. Everybody out. Everybody out. Everybody out. Out, man. Everybody out. You have 2 hours to evacuate. Everybody out. Everybody out. 2 hours will be evacuated. Plymouth is evacuated. And in the emergency operating center, new record stages on the west branch below Renovo are resulting from the record rains of the last 48 hours. On the north branch at Towanda and Wilsbury crust stages will exceed all previous records by 6 to 8 ft. I um I'm still skeptical. Seems to me there's something wrong up here. How about this 40 foot forecast? Uh, I don't quite believe it. Jack, this is Nick. The river elevations at Towanda indicate that they're going to get about 33 ft. If this is true, we're going to get about 40 ft down here. Oh my god. If this happens, we're going to get clobbered. We hope this is a mistake. Will you please check this with flood forecasting at Harrisburg and get back to me as soon as possible? The question is relayed through state civil defense and quickly confirmation comes back. Big trouble upstream. Wilsbor will face it tomorrow. Okay, gentlemen. Here's the situation. Now the forecast is for 40 ft at sometime around 10:00 to noon this morning. We've got to get people out there and work on the dikes. Get them built up as high as we can. with the hope that we may be able to hold it. Now, we're pretty pessimistic and if White is right, uh, we're not going to hold it, but it's better to try than not to do anything about it. The other thing we've decided is this, that we're not going to notify the people to get out until morning twilight. We don't want to take people and put them out in the streets in the pitch black right now where they won't know what's coming or what's happening. So, this announcement is going to come out to the general public at 5:00. Now, in the meantime, it's going to get the contractors and the gravel piles and the sand piles and the sandbags stored along the dyke so that we can work much more rapidly as soon as we get the people out after 5:00. We're going to have to sandbags and levers both sides of the river. We're going to need 100 trucks. Daddy, sandbags, paper bags, plastic, anything you've got that will hold sand. Put this material on your porch and turn your porch light on. I won 50 tons of sand at the Ros Street pumping station and I won it there by 500 a.m. [bell] At 4 in the morning, a 4ft wall of water sweeps over the dikes at Corning, New York, and 17 people die there. The Jimong River rages on down through Elmyra. Horseheads, painted posts, flooding them all on down to the Susuana. Flash flooding has put a bulge in the river at Harrisburg, too. And river rescue crews are pulling victims out of the water. Welcome ashore. There you go, buddy. Are you all right? Did you hear? Yeah, they chased me out of my warm bed. You didn't want to come? No, I was going to stay. How long did you think you could stay there? Well, let's put it this way. I've been there a little over 48 years. Rober, I stay a little longer. At 5:00 a.m., first light. Town end goes on the air with the public warning. This is very bad news for Wyoming Valley. We don't want to scare anybody, but the time is important. The forecast now is that the river is going to be higher than the dikes. that it's actually going to get to a crest of about 40 ft sometime between 8:00 and noon today. There's a possibility that we may contain it, but it's only a possibility. Now, the important thing is to get out of the low areas, but the next thing is this. We want volunteers to work on the dyke. Lzern County Civil Defense is asking for 10,000 volunteers to assemble along the banks of the Sescuana at 5 a.m. Bring shovels. Wear your old clothes. Be prepared to work to try and contain the river. Meet at the river banks. We need approximately 10,000 people. Downstream. The time for sandbagging is passed. Harrisburg. [music] Heat. Heat. Wils Bar still holding out, but barely. A very important announcement here. The sightseers, please leave East Market Street. The dikes are getting pretty bad now, and what they don't need is you hanging around. Water is creeping up on the courthouse, backing up through the sewers, flooding the subb and the emergency control center. The civil defense staff is forced to relocate upstairs. At 10:30, another warning. This is General Town, the civil defense at the courthouse. Now, if you haven't evacuated by now, you've got to get out. We're having trouble at the Riverside Drive area in Old River Road. Right now, the rivers at the level of the dyke and uh it's uh pretty close to going over in the areas in Wilsboro. We expect to have to blow the sirens pretty soon to call the [music] people off the work on the dyke. As of now, we're still holding and hoping. An extreme emergency exists in the Wyoming Valley with emphasis, heavy emphasis in the look area. They are expecting to lose the battle with the dyke at any time. At 10 after 11, John McCormick reports from the riverfront. General, I'm down here on Riverside Drive and as it now looks, we've had to clear it. The water is coming over. That's all we can do. The city waits. Get out now. [music] Get out now. There's still time, but this is the warning that the river is starting to come over the dyke. Work on the dikes has ceased. The water is expected to break through. Keep your head about you. There are plenty of people around to help you out. You have places to stay. You will have food. You will have bedding. You will have everything. So, don't panic. Just get yourself to safety as quickly as possible. [music] [bell] [music] Unbelievable. South Wilsbury completely inundated with water. [music] You can't even see a road, a side road, an alley, a back street or a backyard. The water is resting at the first floor of many and many of the homes in the south Wilsbury section. All it is is muddy Susanna. Wolsberry police, anyone who has a boat requested [music] to bring it to the police department. 80,000 people have been evacuated safely thanks to the warnings, but a few stragglers still remain. Police are manning boats all up and down South Main Street here. Uh shouting instructions to many of the volunteers, the civil defense workers who are scrambling and trying to uh make a way out of this what's turning out to be a real crisis situation for the South Wils Fairy. There uh were some explosions reported. There's a fire uh over in another section of town. The smoke is still billowing into the air and there's still no report of firemen have been able to get to that place in any great number. Civil defense calls on the Naval Reserve Center at the airport for help. Okay, tower. This is Navy control. What is the whereabouts of your Beaver aircraft for firefighting? We'll need all aircraft the vicinity of downtown Wilsbury. They can't get any. Calls for help keep pouring in. We have a rep report of four people on a rooftop corner of Church and Rudder Kingston. Kingston. Okay, get Tower. I think we have an HS2 aircraft working the Wyoming area. Roger. Tower's going to free him up. I need him to ruin church for a pickup of four people on a rooftop. On a rooftop. Father Jordan, it looks like here announces that St. huge mountain top has um facilities and shelter for people who need a place to stay up in the mountain tops area and uh you'll find plenty of food, shelter and what have you right there. Red Cross shelters are now open at the G High School, Grant and Lehi, the East End Primitive Church, Kder Street, the Army Reserve Center. Is it fun or is it bad? Is it sad? Fun. United. She has a different attitude. Well, she's young. She don't understand what it's all about. But it's a sad thing, you know, losing everything that you have like that. By nightfall, there's no longer a river and [music] a valley. The river has become the valley. [bell] All the great rivers [music] are in full flood. The Saskuana, the Skoolkill, the Alageney, and the upper Ohio. And in Virginia, the James. The city of Richmond is deep underwater. Its second flood of the century in just three years. But this time, the civil defense planning and preparation that followed Hurricane Camille will cut the death toll from 151 dead or missing in that earlier disaster to just 13 in this one. [music] And Wilts Barra still flooded out. [music] [music] Across the river, so are Kingston, Plymouth, 40. [music] Kingston, worst of all. Of its 6600 homes, only 20 are still above water. With water ringing the courthouse, the emergency center has moved again to a school board building on a hill across town. P46 command. P46 in command. I have now established at the civilian defense center down at already. General Townin has called a meeting of local leaders to coordinate their [music] efforts in the weeks ahead. at the meeting now. They've got engineers and medical, fire chiefs, police, military, the Red Cross, we've got county officials, and we've got city, burrow, and township officials. On the question of curfews, we're going to have to keep people out of those areas that were flooded. Now, Bob, do you think we've got enough military here to to be able to accomplish that? Yes, sir. We have 400 men from the 109th artillery that we can put on the street and we have another battalion on the way in to take care of the east side. Help from the outside is on the way too. The military with men, equipment, supplies. [music] Every available helicopter within flying distance, Army, Navy, [music] Air Force, Coast Guard, is being called in for emergency service, and planes are pouring in with thousands of tons of supplies. Two main distribution points are established, too. One at the airport, the other at the Pocono Downs racetrack in Wilsboro. Food, clothing, emergency equipment of every kind. We have a generator up at Pocono. The generator is 25kw generators for retreat hospital control maybe control. Where's your chinook working right single point suspension? It's a generator. Finally, the flood is gone, leaving fish flopping in the streets of Kingston. And everywhere, mud. Sour, stinking mud. Downtown, the trash goes out by the tongue while people with nothing pick through the mess trying to salvage something. Suddenly going homes become a bitter thing. When I first opened the door, this was the first the worst moment of all. You see everything topsyturvy where it had floated up to the ceiling and then down again. And it is a real horror. Everything is gone. Oh my god. What are we going to do? Come on. You can get Oh, what are we going to do? People are just now beginning to realize just exactly how little they have left. When you see that yellow stuff pouring right through a beautiful home, I'm telling you what, break your heart. really break your heart. In Luzernne County alone, more than 10,000 homes have been under a dozen ft of water. Only two had flood insurance and rebuilding seems an overwhelming [music] task. We don't want to give it up, but uh you can only do so much. just how much can a human being's body take and how much of a mental strain uh can they take at the same time worrying about what they're going to do and uh where do we go from here? You need a little bit of help. We need a lot of help. We need help now. I mean it isn't a little cricket overflowed. It's a whole valley that's destroyed. I have six more years to go on mortgage. How are you going to How are you going to get the money to rebuild? That is undetermined as yet. I have to wait and see what the federal government's going to give, what the state government's going to give, if they're going to give anything. Help of every kind is needed, and many are too old, too sick to walk very far to find it. To meet the emergency, hundreds of federal and state disaster workers are rushed in. Disaster assistance centers are set up to provide one-stop service, one place where people can come for whatever they need. Emergency medical help, mops and brooms for cleanup, food stamps, surplus foods, legal assistance, unemployment insurance, reemployment aid, small business loans on generous terms, other loans to rebuild ruined homes and replace lost personal possessions at extremely low interest. And for those who've literally lost everything, house trailers rentree for a year. In the year ahead, the federal government will spend more than $3 billion for relief and reconstruction. Wilsbor has been hardest hit of all. And so the White House sends a special representative, Frank Kluchi, born in this town, to organize and speed the rescue effort. And the Army Corps of Engineers will have its work cut out, removing millions of tons of debris, helping the Department of Housing and Urban Development set up trailer villages for the homeless, building temporary spans over smaller streams. This is a mess. A real mess. You scrub and clean and carry mud, but it's on the walls. It's on everything. Terrible thing. It makes you want to take a match to it. All ladies with hair dryers in the Wils Barara Kingston area are urged to contact the telephone company. They are needed to dry out delicate electronic equipment so service can be restored. I don't think they're going to live here for at least 3 to 6 months at least. The smell has got to dry out. It stinks in here. That's something to smell at. I bet you'll be glad when this is all over. Woohoo. Oh, I I certainly am a mess. Listen, you kind of took a beating, didn't you? We certainly did. Did you lose everything in the house? Everything from top to bottom. Just a little of our roof was sticking out, but we'll manage somehow. We're thankful for the years that we did have. We can remember them. Maybe, you know, just the kids had a chance now. It would be all right. In time, the mud will dry into dust with no improvement. thick choking clouds of dust that have to be hosed down, washed away. [music] For many, it's been a total disaster. Well, again, I thank God for a man like General Town who made the decision when he did to evacuate the area. Otherwise, there would have been hundreds of lives lost. Did you have any idea anything like this would ever happen? Never. [music] I never thought I'd see the water come over that dyke. So, you do think it'll happen again? Oh, yes, I do. Oh, yeah. [music] And now the question is, get out or go on? I'm definitely leaving. I like the neighborhood. I like the people that I live around. But, uh, once is an experience. It comes down to the tragedy of walking in and seeing what's left of a lifetime. Terrible experience, terrible feeling. You You've lost everything. So, let it go. You know that attitude changes every day. When you come back, you find, well, maybe there is a chance and you get a little more hope each day. We're going to stay. We're like old General MacArthur. I will return. Yes, sir. We're going to stay. [music] Heat. [music] [music] [music] Heat. [music]