Throwback Sunday-September 11, 2011 I Am So Grateful

I dedicate today's post to "Miss Norma", a woman in her 90's with terminal cancer who has been traveling the United States in a motor home with her son and daughter in law.  It has now become apparent that the end of being on this Earth is near for Miss Norma.   But the last year of her life has brought so much adventure to her - and so much gratitude for all that have been reading the posts of her family.

Godspeed, Miss Norma.  As your family wrote on Facebook yesterday, "We cannot control the wind but we can direct the sail.” —unknown."

Today, I rerun a post from September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of what we call "9/11" in the United States.  But September 11, 2011 had a different meaning for me.  This is the fifth anniversary of my returning home from vacation after a natural disaster hit my area of New York State.

My first post from September 11, 2011 was yesterday.  This, with minor edits, was my second post.

The events of September 11, 2011 gave "9/11" a whole new meaning for me and my spouse.  It is the anniversary of a homecoming.  The day before, we drove over seven and a half hours from Maine to upstate New York, knowing our neighborhood had been flooded September 7-8.  We weren't able to arrive in time to beat a curfew, and police would not allow us back into our neighborhood.  We had to drive another 35 minutes just to find a motel room.  But now, September 11, 2011, we are let in, and our not knowing is about to end.

We have come home and I write the below post from my home computer because - another miracle - we have power.

For my faithful readers, thank you for bearing with me during this week of remembering.  Is it strange that I returned to my flooded neighborhood with a feeling of - gratitude?

Sunrise 9-8-16

September 11, 2011 - I Am So Grateful

I am so grateful today.

 Some of you may be getting tired of my recent posts about a storm called Lee and the over 10 inches of rain dumped on the Binghamton, New York area a few days ago (on top of what we had received from Tropical Storm Irene), causing flash floods and then record river flooding.  But it is very real to me and to over 20,000 people evacuated from this area.  If I had been home and not on vacation, I would have been one of those evacuees. 

My son was one of the evacuees, told to leave his trailer park after a mudslide hit the area. Turns out about half the park was lost, trailers tossed everywhere.  His was not one of them.  The water stopped just short of his floor, so his contents remained dry.

He had a lot of problems fleeing on the damaged roads, but made it to our house in time for the river flooding to begin.  We have flood walls in our neighborhood, but they were fully breached for the first time since they were built in the 1930's (5 years ago there was some spillage but the rains stopped just in time).  Areas in easy walking distance of my house were totally under water, including a Home Depot and a major area employer.  Our house remained an island along with part of our neighborhood.  Other parts of the neighborhood, on the other side of Main Street, are still under water,I understand.

The evacuees returned between yesterday and today at least on this side of Main St.  Our local supermarket reopened yesterday.  Many, many basements were flooded.  No houses were swept away in our immediate neighborhood but there is a lot of damage.  There was a breach of diesel tanks several doors down from us at a municipal water pumping station so diesel also spilled into the water.  Frankly, it stinks of diesel everywhere.

Ironically we are no longer under a boil water order but the order remains in force several blocks from us.

So why am I grateful?
1.  The obvious - our house is here, and is livable.  Our immediate neighbors are here and their houses are livable.
2.  No lives were lost that I am aware of, although one neighbor had to be rescued from deep water because he tried to evacuate using a street that turned out to be the wrong street to use.  Ironically his house was probably the least damaged of those on our block.  His car is still under water on the infamous "other side of Main Street".  He got his share of ribbing today.
3.  Neighbors have pulled together, not that this is ever an unfriendly community.  We got offers of help from children of one next door neighbor (the one I wrote about in July when his wife died).  One neighbor cooked breakfast for my son while he was here.  I am told there were impromptu block parties last night along with a mystery fireworks show.  And gosh, we missed it!
4.  The firemen.  Yes.  Firemen from Throop, PA were here earlier yesterday helping to pump out basements.  (I don't know the exact distance from here but they are close to Scranton, which is an hour away.  And PA has its own problems right now!)  Also in our neighborhood were firemen from Moravia, NY, which is in Cayuga County, to the south and west of Syracuse.  One of their trucks was decorated with a 9/11/01 commemoration.
5.  My T-Shirt.  As soon as I got home I knew I would be getting dirty so I dug for an old T-Shirt.  And what leaped into my hands but a NYFD T-Shirt I purchased at Macy's right after 9/11, when I was visiting my downstate mother in law.  Proceeds from the T-Shirt benefited the first responders of that day.  And now they are up here, 10 years later, helping us.  For what it is worth, all or almost all of the 9/11 commemoration ceremonies in this area were canceled due to the flood.

I hope soon I can return to the "regularly scheduled blog programming" but for now, what is happening in my neighborhood deserves my time and blogging attention.  What you will not get is pictures of houses, as I will not document that kind of misery. But businesses are fair game and - well, I have to be able to get close enough first.

Tomorrow is another day....

Two Reunions

Two years ago, on the first Friday of August.  It is two years since some first cousins and their families gathered at my home in Westover, near Johnson City, New York for a mini family reunion.  We haven't had one since and I don't know if we ever will have one again.

After the reunion was over, I wrote this blog post.  It's hard to believe two years have passed since the reunion, and almost three years since a flood that devastated my neighborhood, and other parts of the Triple Cities of Upstate New York.

It's been a time of recovery and a time of hope. A time of memory (the topic of the August NaBloPoMo),  A time of ReUNION.

Slowly, the flood ruined houses are finally being demolished. Much (not all) of the land will be turned into green spaces, never to be developed again.

Former BAE Industries, Westover, NY, July 3, 2014

The ruined factory I speak of (still not demolished) once occupied by BAE Industries and 1300 workers, still waits for its date with the bulldozer.  At one time it was the largest wood framed structure in the United States.  Its history is forgotten by so many.

But on the other hand, since I wrote this, at least one new business has started where another one had closed - a seed of hope.

And our town, the town of Union, has been planning a gigantic planning project, the ReUNION Project 2020.  There are a lot of high hopes for our area.  Time will tell what positive things will come out of this disaster.

This is the post I wrote after the cousins reunion, on the eve of the first anniversary of the flood.

On the Cover of the Rolling....Flood Book

It is said that everyone has their 15 minutes of fame.  Sometimes, that fame is a welcome thing.  Don't you want to be famous?  Doesn't everyone?

Sometimes, it is your neighborhood that becomes famous.

Many times, you just as soon wish it had never happened.
That's what I wish, every time I leave my house near Johnson City, NY and walk or travel more than about three or four blocks.

I pass buildings that became vacant 11 months ago today, and are still vacant.  Some don't have interior walls.  Some are still filled with debris.  Some have "For Sale" signs.  Some still have bushes encrusted with flood mud.

There is the former credit union building.  The former day care center.  The former doctor's practice. The former 600,000. square foot factory building that once held 1300 workers.  The former adult day care center.  The sagging houses that will never be occupied again.  One entire street is almost devoid of occupants, with just a handful of hardy souls trying to reclaim their lives.

The out of business and for sale tire store whose mechanics nourished my son's love of car repair especially touches my heart.  The former.....the former.....

Many businesses have reopened.  The Home Depot.  The Ollies.  The window contractor.  The Aldi.  Our local pediatrician. A dentist.  A massage therapist.   My beloved Unicorn Electronics.  Wild Birds Unlimited.

We must look towards the future and I usually do, but today I look back one last time.

This past weekend, I had several cousins visit from the New York City area, Pennsylvania, and (by Skype) Florida, the midwest and Texas.  We had a lot of fun, and we talked about many things.  Still, a certain book I had taken out of the library drew a number of fascinated readers.  They paged through the pictures while my young adult son provided the narration.

One of the cousins graduated last year from Binghamton University.  She looked at pictures of places she knew. She had graduated in May of 2011 and the pictures were taken during the period of September 7, 8 and 9, 2011 during the flooding caused by Tropical Storm Lee,  It was a book about the flood.  If she had still been going to the college, she may well have volunteered at the Events Center, which became one of the evacuation centers.

My neighborhood is on the cover of the flood book.  My house is even visible (no, not telling you which one) in the aerial photo.

Our neighborhood of Westover, along with several other areas (some of which suffered much worse than we did) have become a symbol of the flood.  Let us name them:  Owego. Castle Gardens.  Twin Orchards.  The Southside of Binghamton.  There are others.  I really don't know why our neighborhood was chosen for its 15 minutes of fame, but it was.

When I first found out our neighborhood would be on the cover, it was emotionally very hard.  It was just a couple of months after the flood, and my feelings were still too raw.  But, when I saw the book at the library this past July, I knew it was time.  Time to put the flood where it belonged, in the past.

Time to read the book.  Time to move on.

So we looked at the book, and then went on to much happier things. We had such a good time that my sides ached the next day.

I wish the flood had never happened.  I wish I could have had the power to prevent the storm from doing what it did to our part of upstate NY and parts of several other states.  But wishes have no power.  Only actions.  We have come so far, and we should be proud.

Next month will be the one year anniversary.  I will write about the flood recovery one last time.  And then I hope to move on permanently to other blog topics.

It is time.

The Glads that Could

Looks like a gladiolus opening up its flower spike, doesn't it.   And it is.  I took this picture right after the flood that struck the Triple Cities of upstate NY the first week of September (due to Tropical Storm Lee).

But there is quite a story behind the Glads That Could.  A story of beating impossible odds, defying neglect, and blooming where you are planted.

I haven't grown glads in years. When I first started gardening in 1978 (started because I finally had land - I had been aching to garden since at least 2nd grade, but living in a NYC apartment building doesn't do much for that feeling) my reference book was the Gurney's catalog.  In those days, they were located in Yankton, South Dakota.  I was located in Wichita, KS and their offerings were just right for the zone 6 prairie climate of Wichita.  Scorching summers, short but cold winters, lots of sun, lots of wind.

I fell in love with their glads.  Although we had to dig them up every fall before hard frost, they would come back the following spring and give us spikes of lovely blooms in the summer.  Then, in 1981, we moved away from Kansas from good.

Glads fell out of favor in the gardening world.  It may have been due to an association with funeral home bouquets, some say. But we didn't try to grow glads again - until last year.  By then we were solid residents of zone 5 upstate NY.

A local supermarket had a clearance on glads.  Although there is such a thing as hardy glads now, I don't think these were then.  I confirmed with spouse, who would have to do the digging up (I have back problems) and he agreed to buy a package of six as an experiment.

We planted them on the side of our house.  They never bloomed. (I think they weren't getting enough sun.)  We forgot about them.  Fall faded into winter, winter dumped snow and cold all over us, and we never gave them a thought.

Sometime in late spring, I saw these blades coming up.  We have daffodils and irises planted on the side of our house.  I had no idea what these were.  My spouse, who has a better memory, remembered at once.

The glads!  They had survived our harsh winter of 2010-2011 (almost 118 inches of snow at the airport).  But would they bloom?

It rained and rained this spring. (if you live in Texas, that's where your rain was.)  A heat wave struck in July.  The rains returned in August.  It rained and it rained and it rained and....finally the rivers (we have two) cried uncle, and spread all over our land.

When we were able to return to our house on September 11, I took pictures of my blooming plants for use with Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.  I didn't include this one because it was in a vase by then.

This glad was actually the second to bloom.  One, a similar color, had already bloomed in late August.  The third one is opening now.  The blooms are orange.  One more plant has a flower stalk. Whether it will make it to the frost is unknown, as we may come close to having frost tomorrow night.

No matter.  These glads have shown the character we admire in people - and then some.

Upstate NY Flood Update

Our house (occupied by my son) and one neighbors are the only houses not under water in our entire neighborhood. The other neighbor is still at home. Everyone else has evacuated.  All the local roads are flooded.  Just spoke to my son. Amazingly our house still has power.  He tried to pump the basement but has given up.  It is eerily quiet. I told him to be safe.  Says he can't sleep because people keep calling him....earlier, he had ridden a bicycle around and took some video which he posted on Facebook.

To my readers wishing for the safety of our house and my son- thank you so very much for your prayers and good wishes.  We don't know what to do at this point - because even if we could get home to our area (which would be very difficult right now) we wouldn't be able to enter our neighborhood without a boat.

And the sun is finally coming out here in Brunswick, ME.  So we will try to make lemonaide, not knowing what the next few days will bring.

The Flood Waters Arrive

We spoke to our son a few minutes ago.  The water behind our house is up to our fence meaning any more rain and our back yard is going to flood.  (we are in a 500 year flood zone).  The 500 years may have arrived as our son is fighting what I fear is a losing battle to keep water out of the basement. We have a basement drain and water is coming up it-if he tries to dump down the sink he hears water gurgling - a sump pump would be of no use.

We couldn't get to our home if we wanted to (if we weren't 7 hours away on a good day, anyway) as the flood walls are up.  The town erects portable flood walls in several locations and they are up, so our neighborhood is cut off.  My job is closed because downtown Binghamton is in major danger of flooding. They have turned the event center at BU into a shelter and there are other Red Cross shelters set up.

The Weather Channel is broadcasting at the corner of Main and Front St. in Binghamton as I type.  The river is right up to the flood wall.  Downtown itself has never ever flooded.  We will hit record stage this people. People are coming out to gawk. Well I might have been one of them.

All the schools are closed.  Thre is a long list of closing on a TV channel website - as bad as a major blizzard.  The only good news is - I can now stop talking about Irene.







Wish my son luck.