FLOOD STORIES THEN AND NOW

Actually, I have been spending a lot of time and psychic energy worrying about my daughter who lives near the Susquehanna River in NE PA.   She lives more to the center of town and not on the edges.   She is a RN and works at the local Medical Center.

She did not get any water in her basement but many people did.   There are levees on the river and the river got quite close to the top.   The next town down, Athens PA, the river breached the levees and flooded the town.  What she has to do is boil the water and the sewer system is not functioning.   If the levees had been breached in her town I can not imagine the damage that would have happened.

The hospital has cancelled the elective surgery for two days and she is hoping to be able to get back to work.   Being off is fine when you have something to do.   The town, Sayre PA, has a great Facebook page and they have been updating the townspeople with all the needed information.  

My great grandparents and their family lived near the banks of Turtle Creek.  This was long before any flood control.   My grandmother would talk about the many floods and how they had to move everything to the top floor and then the massive clean up afterwards.  After the parents died her sister Mary O'Rourke told her brother William, O'Rourke to sell the family house and move because she just could not clean a house like that again.

  The did sell and move up on a bluff overlooking the old house and the creek.  The old family house and beyond it is the bluff where they moved.  The town was called East Pittsburgh.