Locals recall floodwaters from Hurricane Agnes in 1972
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
WORMLEYSBURG — With the water level rising in this small Cumberland County borough Thursday night, some residents packed up and left.
Others moved their valuables out of basements and off ground level in the hopes of riding out the flood. Still others just watched as the river crept closer to their front doors.
Many were outside in portions of the streets not yet covered by the rising water, marveling at the flood that turned the Susquehanna River from a wide, shallow, lazy river into a wider, angrier torrent.
John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” was blasting from the front porch of one house, where residents were hosting a flood arrival party, drinking with family and friends. Down the street, another group played military marches over a loudspeaker.
“You just deal with it,” said Chuck Sheaffer, a resident of the borough who was hoping he could get to work Friday morning. “My car is parked on high ground, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”
Wormleysburg is directly across the Susquehanna River from downtown Harrisburg — residents along Front Street have an unobstructed view of the Capitol dome — but culturally it is quite different from the capital city.
This is not a city, not even a small one like Harrisburg with about 50,000 residents. A working-class town of 2,600 people only three blocks wide and wedged into one square mile between the river and a steep bluff that divides the town from other West Shore suburban communities.
The population is keenly aware of the river. They have to be.
Along Front Street, the town’s main road, there are only houses and businesses on one side. On the other, the river laps at the road — even when it’s not flooding. Many residents own boats, tied up directly across the two-lane road from their front doors.
And they’ve seen floods before, plenty of times.
On Thursday night, some residents compared the water level on Front Street to what had been seen most recently in 2004 when the remnants of Hurricane Ivan drowned central Pennsylvania.
The longtime residents spoke of 1972’s Hurricane Agnes, which set the standard for floods in the Susquehanna Valley.
Sheaffer said the basement of his house was completely flooded by that storm, which caused the river to crest at 32.5 feet here.
In Harrisburg, the Susquehanna River is considered to be at flood stage when it exceeds 17 feet. As of Thursday night, the river was nearing 25 feet, with a predicted crest of 28.5 feet by Friday night. It's all thanks to heavy rains from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee, which has been stalled over the northeast since Monday.
Earlier in the day, Gov. Tom Corbett warned that flood levels could approach the benchmark set by Agnes. Inside the governor’s mansion on Front Street in Harrisburg, there is a small plaque commemorating the height of that storm's floodwaters.
“We suspect that we’re going to see water coming in” at the mansion, Corbett said Thursday.
Susan Corbett, the state’s first lady, supervised the removal of historical and valuable items from the governor’s mansion Thursday in advance of the flood.
Even if the flooding does not reach record levels, it will still claim some prizes.
On Thursday night, one of several pontoon boats tied up along the riverbank in Wormleysburg — property of residents who were either too ill-informed or too stubborn to remove them ahead of the flood — broke free from its moorings and went careening into the Market Street bridge, which connects the town to Harrisburg.
The boat had its top sheared off and continued down the river. The bridge appeared undamaged.
“It just broke loose and went floating on down,” said Mark Hawbaker, a resident who witnessed the incident. “We knew since Saturday or Sunday that we were getting all this rain. You have to prepare.”
Across the river in Harrisburg, Mayor Linda Thompson issued a curfew starting at 8 p.m. Thursday and gave police the authority to ticket anyone who left their houses — even if only to take a picture.
In Wormleysburg, there were no police to be seen, although National Guard troops had shut down the main road into town from the nearby borough of LeMoyne due to flooding.
Deb Moore, a resident of Second Street in Wormleysburg, said there had been no orders to evacuate or official warnings from local police or the National Guard.
Corbett said more than 1,200 National Guard troops had been called into duty to deal with the flooding, with about 400 guardsmen dedicated to Wilkes-Barre to help with evacuations and security. They had rescued more than 60 people by ground and another 76 people by air as of late Thursday night, the governor said.
Five people were confirmed dead in Pennsylvania from the flood.
Also Thursday night, Interstate 81 northbound was closed about 30 miles north of Harrisburg because of a washout. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was closed between the capital city and the Lancaster exit — roughly 30 miles east of Harrisburg, because of concerns about flooding and the structural integrity of some bridges.
The state Capitol was closed Friday, and Corbett encouraged businesses to make “a good business decision” about whether to open Friday with concern for employees.
The governor also assured the public that state and federal aid would be on its way to help those affected by the flood.
While most of the attention will go to cities like Harrisburg and Wilkes-Barre — where the Susquehanna is predicted to crest at 41 feet, the exact height of the city’s flood wall — there are dozens of small towns like Wormleysburg that dot the Susquehanna Valley.
