I was three years old and recall looking out from the top of a nearby commmunity. I saw nothing but water everywhere. Does anyone have any stories to share? I would love to hear them...
OT: Agnes Flood June 23, 1972
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I graduated from Penn State in June, 1972. I had gone home to eastern PA the week before graduation and could not make it back to campus because of the flooding. So, I am the proud recipient of a "mail order" diploma from PSU. Fifty years later, I still regret that my parents were denied the opportunity to see me graduate.
A week or so later, my soon-to-be-bride and I drove along the Schuylkill near Pottstown and could see the water marks on the walls of old farmhouses near the river bank. In some cases the water was higher than the first floor windows. IIRC there were oil storage lagoons along the river that flooded. It was a mess.
A week or so later, my soon-to-be-bride and I drove along the Schuylkill near Pottstown and could see the water marks on the walls of old farmhouses near the river bank. In some cases the water was higher than the first floor windows. IIRC there were oil storage lagoons along the river that flooded. It was a mess.
My family always talked about Agnes. I was born 2 years later, so i didn't experience it firsthand. However, what i do remember about it is that Berks Foods (Hot Dogs) is located down by the Schuylkill and once it flooded the entire warehouse went under. They said all over the Southside of Reading you could find hot dogs and ring bologna floating in the water.
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I remember it like it was yesterday. Never saw a raging river running down my street before Agnes and it never happened after her. It happened at night which made it really scary. We certainly got off easy compared to thousands of others.
Was 15 and living in Hughesville, PA and saw a house float down Muncy Creek and hit the bridge on 118 leaving town. Also saw 2 dingbats canoeing Muncy Creek during the peak of the storm.
I was 7 years old and we lived in MIddletown, in the Pineford Village Apts. The Swatara Creek ran just south of the apartment complex. In 1972, there was just woods between the apartment complex and the creek (a warehouse is there now). If you look on a google map, you will see an apartment building called The Lynwood Building. We lived in that building. The water from the Creek came up to the parking area just to the south of our building, probably 20 feet from our front door. I distinctly remember someone's Plymouth Roadrunner (with the wing) being submerged in the water. I loved that car.
Somehow, my dad found out that there was some empy apartments in the high rise building that was being constructed up on Pineford Road. We were on the 5th or 6th floor of that building for a couple of days. It was like camping for me and my (then) 3 year old brother.
Somehow, my dad found out that there was some empy apartments in the high rise building that was being constructed up on Pineford Road. We were on the 5th or 6th floor of that building for a couple of days. It was like camping for me and my (then) 3 year old brother.
Where we lived in State College we weren't directly impacted other than it rained for what seemed like days as I was just a little boy at the time. My grandparents had a cottage on the Juniata River near Lewistown. I remember my mom on the phone with her dad, my grandfather, begging them to come home (back to State College) was the storm was heading our way. They finally relented and came home. We went back after the storm to have found the cottage had a water level of nearly 6 feet from the floor. We shoveled mud out of the place for 2 days. It took a lot of cleaning and hard work, but the place was restored. One thing I remember. They took the fridge and hosed out the motor area and cleaned it up and it worked for several more years. There as a radio that got a little mud inside where the slider was that indicated the frequency. After cleaning, it worked for years. But what a mess.
I was 12 living in NEPA. My father was a captain on the fire department as well as being a master electrician. Was playing wiffle-ball with some buddies when the sirens started blaring at around 11:30ish. That was the call that the Susquehanna had breached the dikes. I recall running home and my mother was crying. My family lived "On the hill" so we were in no danger of being flooded, but we had relatives in the flood zone. My father pulled into the driveway in a FD truck, came into the house, and grabbed me. My mother was irate, she wanted to know where he was taking me. My father said he wanted me to see the flooding, that I would never, ever see something like this again. We drove to town, parked the truck and near the intersection of 2 streets that I had walked a hundred times with buddies, and the water was already 8 feet high and gushing. We got into a 12 foot, aluminum boat with a 10 horse power motor. We went down South Main Street into a store called Main Hardware. The window was already smashed. We pulled into the store and took a ladder off the wall! I know this flood was tragic for many....but that day...as a 12 year old kid, I was having a blast. Motoring down South Main street in a boat, in awe of what I was experiencing. It was only till after the river receded did I realize how awful it really was...
On a side note, the woman speaking at 1:52 of that video appears to be at PSU. It looks like Beaver Stadium in the background.
My brother was in the National Guard at that time and was deployed to assist. I remember hearing the stories of caskets floating away from the cemetery in Forty Fort. There was one story, a rumor I believe, that the casket of a man washed up on the porch of his widow.
Is Agnes the reason they moved the records and birth certificates to New Castle, PA? I thought I remember reading they lost a lot of the records, in Hburg. because of the flooding.
Another woman broke her hip when, as she was standing on a ladder, tried to unscrew a fixture on a ceiling lamp. She reached into the bowl shaped fixture and grabbed a human skull. She freaked out and fell off the step ladder
My life has had a lot of happy accidents and coincidences. My family had been renting half a duplex on Salsburg Street in Plymouth right behind the Polish Alliance building. My grandparents and mother purchased a house up Washington Avenue in Larksville and we moved in April. If we had not moved, we would have been refugees at best, as the levee failed several hundred yards away from that duplex. We were told water almost made it to the second floor of that duplex. I was 4, but always remembered the sirens that day in the valley, and then walking down Washington Avenue to the intersection with Main Street in Plymouth to witness the devastation.
Another fun fact is that my mother was an operator with AT&T and worked in the office on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre. Her brother, my uncle, always told the story dramatically that he took her to work that day and was the last car allowed back across the Market Street bridge. We ended up not seeing my mother for a couple days, and she was one of the people airlifted off the roof after her and a few other operators keeping the phone calls going during the flood. There were photos of the operators being lifted off the roof in the baskets in one of the Agnes books published later.
God bless all those who were impacted throughout the state.
Another fun fact is that my mother was an operator with AT&T and worked in the office on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre. Her brother, my uncle, always told the story dramatically that he took her to work that day and was the last car allowed back across the Market Street bridge. We ended up not seeing my mother for a couple days, and she was one of the people airlifted off the roof after her and a few other operators keeping the phone calls going during the flood. There were photos of the operators being lifted off the roof in the baskets in one of the Agnes books published later.
God bless all those who were impacted throughout the state.
+1. We had a small stream running about 60' from our house and I remember my dad and I putting up sandbags around the bend so it didn't flood down into the yard but my mom has pics of the ducks swimming in the yard about 10' from our back porch. But nothing like the devastation around the Hburg area.
I grew up in Harrisburg and as fate would have it we were on a family vacation at the Jersey shore during the week Agnes hit. Each day I still drive down Cameron Street and there is a marker and the intersection of Cameron and Maclay which shows the high water mark from the flood. Similarly, the old Post Office on Market Street has a marker illustrating where the water was. It is almost hard to believe those areas were under water.
I had just graduated from HS. One of our summer projects was to replace the roof on our house. The crew was 1 of my brothers, me and my Grandfather, who was a builder. Heck some of you might even have attended a school building he built. Anyway, it seemed like we drove in the last nail of the roof, and it began to rain. It didnt stop for days. The Schuylkill river ran right through the center of my town, Schuylkill Haven, and it flooded the downtown. We lived on top of the hill. I remember my Dad and I took our Tri Hull boat with an 85 Johnson on the back, down to the flooding, backed it into the flood area, and when it floated off the trailer, we went looking for many stranded people. some wouldnt leave their homes, others got in the boat and we took them were they could unload safely. it was an experience.
We didnt mess with the river much, too much run off from the mines and the bleach and dye factories. Today I guess it is pretty much cleaned up, which is a good thing.
We didnt mess with the river much, too much run off from the mines and the bleach and dye factories. Today I guess it is pretty much cleaned up, which is a good thing.
Tropical Storm Agnes - Cindy King, left, her sister Tracy, center, and cousin Cindy Fenstermacher are completely covered with mud as they take a break from cleaning and sit on their sofa outside their flood-damaged home in Harrisburg, Pa., July 27, 1972. Flood waters, caused by tropical storm Agnes, receded in the city and home owners returned to clean up. Agnes caused far more damage inland than most storms, with $11.7 billion in 2010 dollars.
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I remember as a young child going up to our weekend house after Agnes in Sullivan County, PA. Near Forksville and Hillsgrove literally any house or camper along the Loyalsock was gone, Elk Creek and Hoagland Branch wiped out homes and campers. My grandfather said that God had hit the reset button on that area. It was wild to see everything gone and how high the watermarks were.... luckily our place was up a mountainside far enough away from Elk Creek.
I wasn't born yet but my family moved to an old house by the "Y" and 405 in '86 and the neighbors showed us where the water marks were from Agnes.
I was born in 1974 but my dad worked for Lycoming County during Agnes and spent many weeks/months afterwards putting town infrastructures back in order. He rode around the county in a helicopter in the immediate aftermath surveying the damage and he has some stories about the things he saw: caskets popping out of the soft ground, animals on roofs, etc. The one that was of particular interest to me was a story he told of a family near Allenwood who claimed to have some strange fish swimming in their backyard. They investigated and found eye-less, albino trout swimming around. The theory was that they had been flushed from some subterranean cavern. He also showed me a photo of some friends of his who found a smallmouth bass swimming in the main hallway of the governor's mansion.
OMG...so many. I can remember the SMELL afterwards, as we were kids - I was 5 or 6, and walking to school by Sept '72 through like early '74. For those who grew up in the Valley, how that stench of mud went on for a year, due to the long clean up and all that new work on sewer lines. Plus both grandparents homes got flooded - that cleanup.
On the west side of the Valley, the river broke through at the Forty Fort cemetery. Our home - still is, about a mile away, but up on a relative bluff, so we didn't get flooded. But the river dug up all those old caskets, and deposited them all throughout FF, Kingston, Edwardsville. The open caskets....
Which leads me to...my mother's oldest sister had died like 4 days before June 23. They couldn't bury her, because the soil was too saturated. So she had to rest in the funeral home....which was in FF, on Route 11, smack-dab target of the river when it broke. Literally, that night it broke through, the parlor director ran to the 2-story building, and put all the caskets up in the top 2nd story - probably not an attic, almost the roof. It saved my aunt. Otherwise...it was bad enough as she was only in her mid-30s... I'll never forget that family trauma.
Or my one grandparent home in Kingston. They only got a few most precious items out, like the family bible. Water hit. All those family books, laid out on the front lawn once the cleanup began, in vain hope they could be dried and cleaned. Just think how many families generations of "history" from that flood....Photos, books, heirlooms.
Jim Cefalo told some stories about his experience cleaning up after Agnes.
On a recent return visit I was shocked how nicely they rehabbed the area around the river. ( it was once known as the Irish flats)
They have an area to launch your kayak they have a least 3 baseball fields plus several football fields.
they have an outdoor covered picnic area that is huge!!
most of it was done with donated labor
I was living in State College on East College and working at the Nittany Mall. The rain was incredible - the walls of the apartment building actually had the water seep through them. All the small streams around State College flooded. PineGrove Mills was a mess.
I had to go to Pittsburgh that weekend for a wedding and route 22 was flooded. I went west on route 80 and that was nearly flooded in Milesburg. The small towns like DuBois were all flooded. Went out to Route 79 to get to Pittsburgh, which was also flooded at the Point.
A fewweeks later, I had to go to Lewiston.
The area along the Juniata was devastated. The Red Cross did a great job providing help to rebuild. I ate at a restaurant that must have not done a good job cleaning before reopening - developed a respiratory infection that took months to clear up.
It was quite the experience.
I had to go to Pittsburgh that weekend for a wedding and route 22 was flooded. I went west on route 80 and that was nearly flooded in Milesburg. The small towns like DuBois were all flooded. Went out to Route 79 to get to Pittsburgh, which was also flooded at the Point.
A fewweeks later, I had to go to Lewiston.
The area along the Juniata was devastated. The Red Cross did a great job providing help to rebuild. I ate at a restaurant that must have not done a good job cleaning before reopening - developed a respiratory infection that took months to clear up.
It was quite the experience.
Backpacked a 50+ mile segment of the Appalachian Trail in Eastern PA a couple of weeks after the hurricane. Springs that were supposed to be seasonally dry or minimally running were gushing out of the mountain.
One year out of PSU and working in the Lehigh Valley, I joined a bus load of volunteers headed to Wilkes-Barre to help clean up on July 4. Books were drying on library steps, reminded me of Twilight Zone episode where guy broke his glasses and couldn't read after nuclear attack.
I also remember "patriotic" residents flying flags in unaffected areas making fun of "the longhairs" coming into town to clean up their city.
I had a roommate from Sunbury, where the wall miraculously held back the river. Army Corps of Engineers built the wall in the 1930s. Wall was only supposed to hold back water long enough for town to evacuate.
I also remember "patriotic" residents flying flags in unaffected areas making fun of "the longhairs" coming into town to clean up their city.
I had a roommate from Sunbury, where the wall miraculously held back the river. Army Corps of Engineers built the wall in the 1930s. Wall was only supposed to hold back water long enough for town to evacuate.
Hurricane Agnes - Berks County's Worst Natural Disaster
Hurricane Agnes hit on June 22nd, 1972, and proceeded to cause millions of dollars worth of damage around the county. Do you remember when Agnes hit?
berksnostalgia.com
South Wilkes-Barre resident recalls clean-up post-Agnes
Fifty years ago, Hurricane Agnes' flooding swept residences "right off the foundation."
www.wnep.com
50 years ago, 1972's Hurricane Agnes killed 122 people and caused more than $2 billion in damage in eastern US
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the historic, deadly flooding spawned by Hurricane Agnes and its remnants in June 1972 across the eastern U.S., including the hardest-hit states of Pennsylvania and New York.
www.foxweather.com
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