This is Rt 170 near Aldenville PA. The Lackawaxen River. Normally just a little stream you can wade across.

Last night I got very little sleep because my county pager was going off like every 15 minutes with the latest update, warning, or disaster declaration.

Today, I had to deal with my ambulance taking 2 hours to complete what would normally be a 40 minute round trip. The trips are, I suppose, still round, because it seems like they're having to take the great circle route to get anywhere.

That's a geography joke. There are not a lot of them.

*groan*
They had to evacuate Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton yesterday. They got everybody out in 2 hours.

well, Riverview is an anomaly...built very recently to fleece the yuppie puppies on an old factory site. The same developer is building similar on the river in Bridgeport, and near City Line. I think he may have just realized all his properties share a unique vulnerability. These disused manufacturing properties were all sited to leverage the Schulkyll Canal...Pottstown, Phoenixville, Norristown/Bridgeport, Conshohocken and Manayunk.

Makes you wonder why people choose to live in areas so prone to flooding and disaster. :3eye:

I was in Tunkhannock(sp) when the remnants of Ivan went through - it wasn't quite this bad, but the susquehanna was lapping at bottom of the rt 309 bridge.

Because they have more money than sense. There's nothing there at Riverview that a yuppie puppy in a SUV can't handle without even pulling the cellphone out of his ear. Note that UT said most housing around here is built outside the floodplain.

New Hope is now flooded probably not quite as bad as it was in 1956. The bridge is still intact. We dealt with it then and we're dealing with it now.

You either killed my remark or compounded it. I'm not sure which, yet.

I've heard the area has been through a lot worse in the past. Are there any buildings with flood history markers on them?

To be fair, my shots were taken well before crest. I should go back today, if I can, to see how they did. The graph for the river at Pottstown says it went up another four feet.

I lived in New Hope in '56 when Diane flooded the place out. (Of course I was four years old at the time.) My dad had a photo of a motorboat moored to a parking meter downtown. I remeber riding with him to go pick up the mail at the post office and turning around when we found out the post office was unreachable.

Right now the Inky was calling for a crest at New Hope at 6.5 feet above flood...it hit seven feet above there in 2005.

As for killing/compounding, that would depend on what you intended. Most housing that's been around a while (mine was built in 1920) is clear of typical 100-year floodplains. There's been some recent opportunistic development like Riverview that made some quick bucks without apparently worrying too much about flooding, I suspect partly because the Feds will indemnify the foolish by insuring flood risks nobody in the private sector wants to touch. And theres some recreational properties locally (Port Indian comes to mind) that are right on the river edge, and they probably got hurt some...but they get flooded pretty often; that's almost routine.

SusanC told me last night that there was at least one rooftop rescue locally (She's in Lower Providence, a municipality adjacent to West Norriton, which is where I live) and several other go-in-with-a-boat-and-pick-em-up deals.

Check out the high water mark on this building...

Rumor has it that Rendell sent PA Guard copters up to Conklin NY (low lying border town) to rescue a bunch of folks. Nice gesture. Of course with Pataki running for President it may be a political coup as well.

He's also probably trying to remind everyone that he beleves the PA Air National Guard belongs to him, so he can try to keep JRB Willow Grove open.

New York?:smack: