Daunting flood recovery begins along
the Delaware after second flood in a year

Pastor Deb Dawson consoles Sheila Collins, right.[More photos]

RIEGELSVILLE, PA (April 11, 2005) - For elderly residents of Raubsville April 3 was a nightmare revisited. Rampaging Delaware River flood waters immersed their simple bungalows for the second time in six months. For many others the second flood was a devastating first-time experience. Flood number two was called by many "much worse" than its Fall predecessor and victimized many hundreds of home and business owners from Easton in Northampton County to New Hope and Yardley in Bucks County.

Many victims have flood insurance to aid in the repairs, but some residents are not able to afford the coverage. News reports said an estimated 2,600 properties along the New Jersey and Pennsylvania banks of the Delaware were impacted. Many hundreds of homes in Riegelsville and the town of Upper Black Eddy, New Hope and Yardley on the Pennsylvania side were particularly hard hit. Assessment of victim needs was still under way this past weekend.

Retired postal worker Ike Repsher and his wife, Helen, who taught ceramics, and their neighbor, Lou DiNoso, became flood victims in Raubsville the first time September 18 when the remains of Tropical Storm Ivan ravaged Pennsylvania. All three homeowners are in their 80s and have lived along the Delaware for decades.

Thanks to the efforts of scores of volunteers, including crews from Trinity Lutheran Church, Lansdale, PA, Zion United Lutheran Church, Brodheadsville, PA, St. John's Lutheran Church, Easton, St. John's United Church of Christ, Riegelsville, and other congregations and neighbors, their bungalows were cleaned and repaired by early spring this year. The early volunteers included students from The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (LTSP).

On March 5, volunteers and friends gathered at the Repshers' home for an inspirational "blessing of the house" ceremony. The Repshers are members of St. John's Lutheran in Easton. Final repairs to their home were completed March 7. Repairs to the DiNoso home were completed late Saturday, April 2, with hopes for a second "blessing service" soon. Less than 24 hours later, the rain-swollen Delaware crested at 36 feet above flood stage in Easton, destroying both properties again.

The second flooding this month was intensified not only by heavy local rains but also by nearly five inches of downpours that fell over the weekend upstream in the Pocono Mountains. The owners of the two Raubsville properties had plenty of company in misery April 3. The second flood was easily the worst in 50 years along the Delaware. Many victims in Riegelsville lived in properties that had not been impacted this way since 1955. (News sources say the region was also hard hit in consecutive years in 1936 and 1937.)

"I'm not up for this," said the Rev. Deborah Dawson, pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Riegelsville. "This flood is 10 times worse than what we experienced in the Fall." Dawson and other pastors in the seven churches of the Palisades Lutheran Cluster heavily invested themselves in flood response work last fall. The key community organizer in that response was the Rev. William Rex of St. Luke Lutheran Church, Ferndale, PA. Rex took LDR Task Force members Janet Panning, Susan Pursch, Pastor William Erat and Mark Staples on a tour of the devastation April 8. Prior to the tour the Task Force met with the Rev. Cindy Camp, who coordinates disaster relief for Diakon Lutheran Services, and Ruth Doty, a 2004 graduate of LTSP who plans to use her extensive experience as a professional counselor to support flood victims in their loss.

Lutheran Disaster Response task force members from Southeastern Pennsylvania provided key support, and all pledged to renew their efforts now. Hundreds of volunteers gathered in Riegelsville Saturday, April 9 to aid in the initial cleanup efforts. Volunteers will be desperately needed in the weeks ahead. The meeting place each Saturday will be 9 a.m. at St. Peter's here. From Riegelsville the volunteers will be dispatched to victims here and in surrounding communities. The initial cleanup will consist of volunteers' hauling away curbside, flood-soaked debris cleaned from the inside of victims' homes by homeowners and volunteers alike. A second early cleanup stage consists of mucking out basements, bagging contents to be trashed, followed by cleaning and power-washing the affected interiors with bleach and other cleaners. Homes will be gradually assessed for the feasibility of repairs as structures dry out.

For victim Sheila Collins of 219 Fern Road in Riegelsville, the past year has been extraordinarily difficult. She's lived in the house for 28 years. Last July she was laid off from her job at an insurance firm. In January, her husband, John, died. The funeral was conducted by Dawson at St. Peter's. Collins and others credit community and other emergency response officials for warning homeowners of the second impending flood. Most were able to move furniture and precious belongings to top floors of their homes or elsewhere. But Collins faced an imposing cleanup task greatly complicated by fuel tank oil spillage in her basement mixing with contaminated river mud and silt from the flood, which reached a depth of several feet into her house. An extensive, deep pool of water behind her home surrounds a developer's sign for new properties under construction in a field beyond.

Nearby along Delaware Avenue Marie McCarthy gazed into her home's backyard, filled with refuse deposited by the flood, which she says ran five feet deep in the yard and reached a depth of 18 inches into the first floor. The pool in her yard used to raise fish is now contaminated.

In Raubsville along Canal Road, Williams Township crews were busily repairing a section of the roadway washed away and rendered impassable by the new flood. Mailboxes and other refuse could be seen deposited high overhead in trees by the rampaging river. Someone's boat from a place unknown was deposited in a yard across the street from the Repshers' bungalow and a garage and storage shed nearby were washed from their foundations. The ground along the road was covered with a fresh layer of contaminated river silt.

A crowded community meeting at St. Peter's Church the evening of April 8 focused on briefing neighbors from several communities about the challenge ahead. Many praised the response of the Red Cross, community officials and volunteers. How to treat oil spills and other hazardous waste proved to be a major concern. The recovery is anticipated to take six months or more, likely lasting into the Fall, perhaps beyond the first anniversary of the Ivan disaster.