Question

Story of A Flooded Viber​

Answer 1

Answer:

We started our glass business in a small garage in Allentown, Pa. Things were going well enough but I did began to take note a small creek behind the building that rose up on occasion. I wondered if we could get flooded. I began looking into the risk and getting some information on flood insurance. I wanted to get the insurance but my husband did not think it was worth it. We went back and forth. Then one year, just before my birthday, my husband asked me what I wanted and I told him: “I want us to get flood insurance for my birthday.” We did. Then less than three months later we had a flood, a big one, that put four feet of water into our shop. If we hadn’t been insured we would have probably have lost the business. That was nearly 30 years ago and we have ten employees now.

Other responses:

Judith Wrase Nygard recounts:

During the Delaware River floods of Sept. 2004, April 2005 and June 2006 aid efforts were coordinated through the Palisades Cluster of Lutheran Churches (seven Lutheran churches in the Upper Bucks Conference of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod). Established in 2002, the cluster includes Evangelical Lutheran Church of Durham, Saint Peter’s of Riegelsville, Christ Lutheran of Pipersville, Christ Lutheran Church of Springtown, Saint Luke of Ferndale, Trinity Lutheran of Pleasant Valley, and Upper Tinicum Lutheran Church.

After the first flood on Sept. 19, 2004 (20.7 feet at Frenchtown, NJ, the seventh highest flood recorded there) one minister, who came late to the Palisades Cluster pastors’ Bible study, reported a family along Cooks Creek needed help. The pastors went to see and started to collect needed items to help. When they heard that “there are streets in Raubsville where people are walking around in shock,” they organized relief efforts. Clean-up radiated from a tent, set up in Raubsville on Saturdays from September through November. Volunteers with Red Cross flood kits (with a break-down mop, broom, scrub brush, bleach, sponges, rubber gloves and work gloves) dispersed to move flooded home debris into two dumpsters, save what could be saved, and clean up outside the homes. The tent was the place for volunteers and flood victims to eat food donated by area churches as well as the place for flooded-out residents to meet and talk to others. In addition to forms for applying for assistance, information was provided about testing the safety of water in residents’ wells, the second priority of clean-up efforts. Volunteers worked to rebuild some houses, the third priority, and as winter came, there was concern about heat for houses. In all, 25 families in Raubsville and 9 families on Red Bridge Road next to Cooks Creek were helped. In March 2005 the first house blessing was held for a house rebuilt and funded by the Palisades Cluster and Lutheran Disaster Response, and another house was completed by volunteers from northern Pennsylvania.

These two houses were flooded again when the second flood (23.6 ft. at Frenchtown, NJ, the third highest flood recorded there) occurred on April 4, 2005. The first house was condemned, and the second house rebuilt for the second time by the same volunteers. Clean-up efforts centered in Riegelsville, Raubsville, Upper Black Eddy initially at the firehouse, and Point Pleasant at the Baptist Church. Volunteers surveyed the community to determine if residents had water available to use. Volunteer crews helped clean out flooded homes in Point Pleasant. Clean-up kits and water kits were distributed. In addition to food donations from Doylestown Hospital and from individuals, flood victims were able to eat at a restaurant in Riegelsville on a tab that the Palisades Cluster and Lutheran Disaster Response paid through donations. The priorities once again were placing debris into dumpsters as well as getting wells tested. Clean-up and rebuilding relief efforts by volunteers continued through June 2005.

When the Delaware River flooded a third time (23.4 ft. at Frenchtown, NJ, the fourth highest flood recorded there) on June 29, 2006, the churches’ relief efforts were coordinated from Point Pleasant Baptist Church, where soup and other food was served and clean-up kits were handed out. Donations to the Palisades Cluster and Lutheran Disaster Response provided tickets to victims to eat at the restaurant there. People who had spent all their savings to rebuild from one or both earlier floods now worried that no one would buy their property if they wanted to sell. Fire companies arrived in Point Pleasant to pump out basements. To determine the extent of damage and amount of needed help, volunteers went door to door in Upper Black Eddy with lunches in hand.