Anniversary Brings Flood of Memories

Elizabeth Miller remembers the mud, tons of it, filling streets, oozing from crumpled houses and getting under her fingernails.

“There was so much of it. We had mud, mud, mud,” the 83-year-old said with a gasp, recalling one of the nation’s worst natural disasters, the floods caused by tropical storm Agnes 20 years ago last week.

The four-day floods killed 48 people in Pennsylvania and forced the evacuation of 72,000 people, most from Wilkes-Barre. About 220,000 were left homeless. Elsewhere along the East Coast, the storm had killed 73 people.

The Susquehanna River submerged this old coal town and most of the Wyoming Valley in Luzerne County.

“We had the big recliner on the first floor, but it ended up on the second floor,” Miller said, thumbing through a photo album.

“It was incredible how the force from the water lifted things and moved them around.”

No formal observances were planned by the city, but the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency held its annual three-day flood conference in Wilkes-Barre, in part to mark the anniversary.

“We won’t be reminiscing. We’re looking to the future,” PEMA spokesman John Comey said.

Tropical storm Agnes, the aftermath of hurricane Agnes, was the state’s most costly disaster with damage and cleanup totaling $3.1 billion. Flooding and fires destroyed about 68,000 homes and 3,000 businesses, according to PEMA.

The Susquehanna crested at nearly 41 feet--34 feet above normal.

Downstream, the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg was flooded, forcing then-Gov. Milton Shapp to evacuate by boat. In Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio, the Ft. Pitt Museum was inundated.

More than $1 billion in federal and state aid helped communities recover. Only two Wilkes-Barre families had flood insurance.

“Wilkes-Barre really has been benefiting as a result,” said Mayor Lee Namey, whose civic work during the flood helped launch his political career. “We were able to refurbish downtown. It’s a beautiful new downtown for a third-class city in Northeastern United States.”

Dr. George Hudock Jr., the Luzerne County coroner, had one of the more gruesome tasks in the storm’s aftermath.

Rushing water tore out a section of the Forty Fort Cemetery and washed about 2,000 caskets and bodies into Wilkes-Barre. Hudock was in charge of rounding up the bodies.

“There were body parts deposited on back porches, on basements, on roofs,” Hudock said.

He said 20 years have altered his perspective: “Now, it almost has a humorous tinge with portions of corpses hanging in trees.”

He said 32 bodies were identified and reburied at the cemetery. The others were buried in a common grave with a monument in place of individual gravestones.

But there also was new life during the flooding.

Power was knocked out at the Nesbitt Memorial Hospital in Wilkes-Barre, but a sole maternity nurse kept a week-old premature baby alive while waiting to be evacuated by boat.

“I had to keep him close to my body to keep him warm,” said Dorothy Tribus, the hospital’s maternity supervisor. “There was no power. It was dark. I wouldn’t move him until I had calm waters.”

Twenty years haven’t changed the mind of retired Maj. Gen. Frank Townend, who was the Civil Defense director for Luzerne County.

He said he made his most important decision ever when he delayed by three hours the evacuation orders for Wilkes-Barre and the surrounding communities.

“We were worried about getting people up at 2 or 3 in the morning in the dark,” said Townend, now an attorney. “We were more afraid of the panic than the river.”