Irene came barreling through the Northeast six months ago this Tuesday, February 28. My six year old accompanied on a tour of some of the worst-damaged sites from the devastation on a recent afternoon, the weather warmish and the skies a moody mix of rich sun and scurrying clouds.
We retraced the steps we took two days after the heavy rains dumped record amounts at summer’s end, starting near our home a hillside up from the Catskill Creek, where several dozen boats were lost into the nearby Hudson, along with all the rides at a popular waterside ice cream spot, the wares from both a used kids’ stuff emporium and the goods from a t-shirt manufacturer.
The high school parking lot is still muddy and chunked with broken asphalt slabs. There’s talk of taking out the old railroad trestle that’s been in place some 150 years, when it was built to carry one of the nation’s first train lines. But everything was bustling with renewed activities and most major repairs were completed.
Milo, in his back seat booster, pointed out all the trees bent sideways as we followed waterways towards the mountains, from whence all this destruction emanated. Each time he spotted a remaining refrigerator in a tree, or boarded-up, half-smashed building, he hollered out.
Once up onto the high Catskills plateau referred to in Greene County as simply “The Mountaintop,” we both started to note the amount of fresh riprap along roadways, and larger boulders placed along the banks of streams. Outside Windham, which was one of the first visions of total devastation to make it out via Facebook and YouTube last August, there are still large muddy lots, fallen hillsides and jumbled buildings in places. But by and large, the community seems to be thriving and places where the roads had buckled and cars piled up, six months back, are all back in business.
Ashland, up 23 a bit further, has been scarred by the amount of gravel being taken out of surrounding hillsides by Peckham Industries and other mining concerns. The place feels dusty, mud-drenched, and overrun by trucks that still hum everywhere around the area.
We proceeded on towards Prattsville, which we had never been able to reach back in August. We zipped by portions of the state highway that had been ripped away and are now back, gleaming with new asphalt and the shimmer of giant boulders holding everything in place, including the again-quiet Batavia Kill Stream. Then noted a four-story pile of housing debris, studded with plastic kids toys and shredded clothing, at the entrance to town.
You know that feeling when your eyes fill with tears uncontrollably? Many of us haven’t run into it much since childhood, escaping the death of someone close, and maybe heartbreak. Milo asked why I was crying before I knew I was.
I used to shop in Prattsville, come there for pizza when I lived in nearby Westkill, just outside of Lexington; visited Pratt Rocks and the Pratt Museum regularly.
It’s hard to say whether two thirds or three quarters of Main Street’s buildings are still empty, battered and windowless, or on their sides. Gaping holes now lie between where homes once stood. Simple signs done up in house paint advertise masonry skills, or solar panels, here and there. Stretches of forest behind where lawns once sat are still littered, a story high, with plastic bags and blue tarps, strung between trees like some giant’s game of cat’s cradle.
And yet the tavern is still open, as it stayed throughout the past half year since Irene. And the Great American supermarket where I used to shop is thriving, expanded just before disaster hit and back on its feet again. Even the hardware store is back in business after losing just about all its lumber and hardware. And there’s progress at O’Hara’s, the service station which everyone thought was a goner, lying as it did in the center of the watery onslaught.
Every here and there, a Rebuild Prattsville sign signals hope. As Milo holds my hand, the two of us gazing across Route 23 at an early 19th century Reformed Church that seems to be rotting now, on top of extensive flood battering, a row of cars and busses drives by honking horns, proclaiming local students’ love for their basketball team, The Wildcats.
There is life after disaster — although it’s hard to remember as I return to where I once lived for a fruitful decade, before Milo. Lexington’s still all mud and its two closed hotel buildings, one of them once home to Art Awareness and one of the more adventurous exhibition and performance schedules in Upstate New York, look ready to cave in. Windows are broken. Boards twisted. Nearby are old metal garage structures still on their sides.
This old house
We head up Route 42, which just reopened the previous week, towards Shandaken. My house was up here and I read a news piece, this autumn, about how two dump trucks carrying rip rap had lost their brakes coming down Beech Hill across from my old living room. One took out what had been my garage. The other took out what was once my library.
It was funny when I read about it in the paper, and when a friend sent a smart phone image of the damage, too little to examine closely. But when we got out of the car to walk around the home I’d never shown my son, now wrapped in police tape with a condemned sticker on its front door, I again choked up.
Later, as light left this strange winter’s late-February sky, we headed up to where the Blenheim Bridge once stood, now home to only an historic marker and two crumbling abutments. It was the world’s longest covered bridge…until August 28. No one found its trusses.
In Margaretville, like Windham, the town’s busy and getting back on its feet, just as the whole area did following the big winter floods of 1996. Then, FEMA funds were quick to appear and the whole process of coming together helped quiet the angry tones of 1994 and 1995’s right wing property rights frenzy, as well as the city vs. upstate battle that finally resulted in a Memorandum of Agreement that has brought millions in development aid to the region.
And yet the old A&P, located in the middle of the floodplain, wasn’t open again. And its new owner, Freshtown, wasn’t letting anyone know its plans, forcing people to drive as far afield as Delhi, Kingston and Prattsville for shopping…a journey of at least 30 to 45 minutes each direction.
Phoenicia, besides the loss of the Bridge Street Bridge, seemed as intact as Catskill did at our trip’s beginning.
Reasons for optimism?
When my wife got home later that night, Milo told her all about the flooded places he’s seen. And daddy’s old house, all wrecked.
Fawn and I spoke about all the good efforts coming together in Prattsville, and whether it made sense to talk about how far they still had to go to rebuild.
I looked over files of flood update materials I’ve been gathering for weeks, planning a story of this sort. There was a flurry of press releases from Assemblyman Pete Lopez of Schoharie, whose district incorporates what became flood communities stretching from the Massachusetts border down into the Binghamton area…all showing how Lopez managed to rise to the occasion as a key voice for small town hurt in the state government over the past six months. Pieces about how proposed legislation to provide tax relief to flood victims became a political football in some communities, such as Wawarsing and Shawangunk in western and southern Ulster County, and a godsend elsewhere. There’s a recent story on how Columbia County is trying to recoup costs it had been promised by FEMA. And much about Project Hope, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s door-to-door response, based in Kingston for Ulster County.
Rebuild Prattsville materials, put together with the help of River Street Planning of Troy, include surveys of what the community could look like, without worries about restraints. There are calls for a bowling alley, a senior center, a brewpub, bed and breakfast establishments, a farmer’s market, a walkable Main Street. As well as ample reports from subcommittees set up following the effort’s first big meeting in early November, just before the elections (when the incumbent supervisor lost his seat to a write-in, who then stepped back in favor of the man he defeated).
A slow recovery
“In some areas I think the recovery has gone very well. In other areas, it’s been slow at best,” said Catskill Watershed Corporation Director Alan Rosa, who was supervisor of Middletown, in Delaware County, when the massive 1996 floods hit. “I don’t think things are recovering nearly as quick as it was in 1996. And I think a lot of that is because we’re in a different fiscal time now.”
Rosa and I spoke about those past floods and how widespread the damage was then. Yet nothing was as fierce as what occurred, in pockets, six months ago when the river at Prattsville rose 15 feet in twelve hours.
“Businesses have had it much worse this time. And I’m hearing from some places that are having trouble getting payments from their insurance companies,” Rosa continued. “In Schoharie and Middleburgh, every business was crushed. But their structures are still there so they can conceivably rebuild within them. For a place like Prattsville, however, there’s little left to go on.”
Finally, Rosa noted how in 1996, the flooding occurred against the backdrop of a relatively healthy economic climate, even in the Catskills, whereas this time, while the state was able to aid its communities pretty quickly, much action from the federal government has been stymied.
“In the long run, the landscape’s going to change some, as a result of all this,” he concluded, referring as much to the way businesses rethink their role in the region, after the stream rebuilds and the like. “In the long run, our communities will all come back.
As if to prove his point, Rebuild Prattsville’s website lists new events after our talk. On March 3, a “Housing Expo & Home Improvement Show” will take place at the local Fire House, while on March 7, a load of free furniture is being delivered to the Great American parking lot for anyone who needs it.
There’s even a Valentine’s Day news release about a local film company, Dreamality Entertainment LLC, setting up shop in town, along with a local filming schedule including such titles as “The Killing Time,” “Climbing Life” and “The Dying Breed,” with stars including the likes of Luke Perry and Lee Majors.
As if in competition, the Governor’s office also sent out its own press release announcing $649,421 for 13 municipalities hit by Irene and Lee, and another round of grants with applications due in the coming week. The recipients, locally, included the villages of Fleischmanns and Margaretville, the Town of Blenheim, the Town of Middletown, and Prattsville, “to complete a strategy that will include a detailed feasibility analysis for priority housing, economic development, and community facility projects…For projects that are considered feasible, funding sources will be identified and secured to commence rebuilding and recovery.”
As my kid said, when we got back from our recent flood assessment afternoon: “It gets better. You tell me so. Now I tell you, too.”++
On Thursday, March 22, the Catskill Watershed Corporation will be holding a special all-day workshop entitled “Are You Ready for the Next Disaster?” at the Margaretville Fire Hall, from 9 a.m. 2:30 p.m. Presenters and moderators include Ulster County Emergency Services Coordinator Art Snyder and a host of top attorneys, town supervisors (including Rob Stanley of Shandaken and Kory O’Hara of Prattsville), firefighters and volunteer coordinators. For further information visit www.cwconline.org or call 586-1400.
Join the family! 
