On Whose Constant Intercession
We Rely For Help

When I saw the wall of water, I knew something had gone terribly wrong.

It had been raining in central Pennsylvania for days, and sporadically for many weeks.  The winter had record snows. The spring, record rains.

Mind you, these rains that came late in the summer were not your garden-variety showers that bring dew to your lawn and mess up your Saturday afternoon golf outing. This was days and days of a rain so prevalent, so monsoon-like that you’d swear you lived in a rainforest.

In 2011, we had 73 inches of rain in Hershey, Pa.  A “normal” year of rain: only 28 inches. But, as the numbers were increasing, we never noticed – until September 7, 2011. A day that no one in Hershey can forget.

I have a garden, or had one, anyway. In the garden was a small, inexpensive 6-inch rain gauge. On one of the first nights of the incessant rains, I went out to look at the gauge. It had overflowed and I emptied the water.

A couple of days later, it rained again. The gauge filled up to about the 5-inch mark. I emptied it once more, thinking, did I forget to empty it the first time?

Then more rain, and I thought, forget about emptying the gauge, it was going to fill up again – I had already decided to take a look at it later on.

Well, later on never came. But Tropical Storm Lee did. On September 7.

That day, I had an appointment near Mechanicsburg, Pa., a town about a 30-minute drive to the west of us in Hershey. Heading down Rt. 322 that morning, I saw traffic stopped in the eastbound lanes. Rt. 322 is a fairly wide road separated by a concrete barrier. As I drove closer, following behind a police vehicle, I saw the traffic was stopped by a wall of water that completely flooded out the lane and was very close to the top of the barrier. I thought that if the barrier gave out, we would easily be swept away.

My appointment lasted until about 12:30 p.m. The rain had passed through Mechanicsburg and the sun was peaking out. I remembered the blocked traffic on Rt. 322 and decided to take an alternate route home. Good choice. A choice made literally in the nick of time. I was very fortunate to be driving my Jeep that day.

I saw water – lots of it – on the highway. First 3 inches, then 6 inches, and in some parts almost a foot of water. The closer I got to Hershey, the worse it became. Every low-lying place anywhere was overflowing.

Then I came to the Swatara Creek on the edge of Hershey. It was rising. Fast.

The worst part was the trestle underpass that would bring me from HersheyPark Drive out to Chocolate Avenue or Rt. 422 downtown. It was a foot deep (or more), but I made the dash with the Jeep and crossed into Chocolatetown. Just in time.

Like doors in a dungeon, the roads were literally closing behind me. First Rt. 39, then the underpass, then parts of Rt. 422. I felt like Indiana Jones being chased by the boulder. One little misstep, one hesitation, and my journey was over.

As I entered Chocolate Avenue (our version of Main Street in Hershey), the eastbound traffic was stopped. There were water rescue craft zipping by and sirens going off and police and rescue personnel everywhere. Sirens on top of sirens. It was a scary, scary moment in Hershey’s history.

Closer to home, a great cascading wall of water was rushing across Chocolate Avenue. Within the hour, that wall would take its toll on the homes and businesses in the old Swatara Station area of Hershey. I arrived home, crossing another small wall of water that stopped at least one car that tried to cross. I parked the Jeep deep in the carport. Just in time to help my 87-year-old mother in law and my wife evacuate out the front door of our home (now the only way out) in a foot of water to a neighbors house, to safety.

I ran back into the house and grabbed what I could. It was a very desperate moment. Not enough time to secure my beloved books in the basement. Not enough time for much of anything.

Then I walked up our street in the blinding rain, carrying a box holding “Kitty,” my neighbor Jack’s cat, to safety. A cat that had never been out of the house before, let alone saved from massive flooding. I was still in my best suit. I didn’t have time to change.

Next door, we stood on the neighbor’s porch, watching helplessly as water, several feet deep, swirled around all sides of our house. The house appeared to be sitting on a moat. For the first time, the thought occurred to us, our house could collapse.

I caught a glimpse of the Weather Channel right before we evacuated. The TV radar showed a “knife of water,” an extremely high-density green area of poring rain. It was lodged over our area in a straight line like a wide-open garden hose, fed by Gulfstream and Atlantic moisture, from south to north. Like we were being singled out. The weatherman was warning us about much more rain to come with no end in sight.

I knew at that time we had to get out of there.

The Swatara Creek overran its banks and took out dozens of homes and businesses. HersheyPark and the surrounding area looked like the Finger Lakes. Hershey’s Zoo America made the national news for having to euthanize its two bison, trapped with no way out, and facing a tragic, watery demise. The water overran our brand-new township building and our sewer plant. It seems fast food isn’t always fast enough. In nearby Hummelstown, Pizza Hut and the 7-11 store were literally submerged in water to their rooftops. McDonald’s and Wendy’s didn’t fare much better and were eventually torn down. So much water everywhere, you literally felt like you were breathing it in. Post-flood, the humidity level throughout our home registered 79 percent for two weeks.

In the aftermath, I tried to find out what happened to the rain gauge. Mind you, the raging water had shifted, shoved, and knocked our two-ton garden shed down, face-first. Raging floodwaters destroyed a neighbor’s fence. Many, many basements were flooded and some could not return to their homes for weeks afterward.

“I’m six feet from the edge and I’m thinking, maybe six feet ain’t so far down.”

--Creed

Why, you might ask, did I store my books in the basement? Well, first off, they were packed away in large plastic containers and stacked up high. But the rush of that volume of water literally knocked everything every which way, capsizing the sealed containers. And second, we don’t live in a flood plain. We haven’t had a drop of water in the basement in 40 years – since Hurricane Agnes. Tropical Storm Lee was simply “an extraordinary event.” In many ways, for us in Hershey, it was worse than Agnes. It overran and overwhelmed everything in its path. So maybe you get complacent – but 40 years of no water? What were the chances?

What I had, what I lost:

My entire Dan Simmons collection, and I had every one of his first editions, gone.
Most of my Ray Bradbury collection. Ravaged and destroyed by muddy rains.
Almost my entire Harlan Ellison collection, ripped and tattered.
Most of my Robert Silverberg collection. Gone by the rapids. Dissolved by disaster.

All total, in the thousands, thousands of dollars. Financial dollars. Emotional dollars.

I am amazed by several things: how much I had, how much I lost, but incredibly, by what I could save.

Saved: My entire Star Trek collection, including the models.

Saved: About 1/3 of my Robert Silverberg collection and a lot of my cyberpunk books, for some strange reason.

Saved: A couple of books from my extensive Harlan Ellison collection and some minor collectibles.

Saved: Books and associated collections -- now stored in a secure manner, offsite.

Saved: A little bid of pride, because some things could be saved.

The floods dumped more than three feet of water into our home – water coming in everywhere – enough water to destroy our oil furnace, hot water heater, washer, dryer, a refrigerator, small freezer, many household possessions, clothing and more than two-thirds of my book collection.

I have a photo of my brave brother-in-law, also named Andrew, who resisted the warnings I was heeding about wading through water that is exposed to an electric current to hook up a new sump pump. In the photo, the refrigerator and freezer are floating. Flotsam and jetsam are all about, including portions of my collection. Particularly hard hit: my Dan Simmons collection. The flood waters tore it to pieces, almost with prejudice.

There is a saying, the best times are not as good as you think they were, and the bad times are not as bad either. Fortunately, this being the worst natural disaster in Hershey’s history, we had very little loss of life.

There were heroics and simple kindnesses everywhere.

Brave fire rescue personnel came by as we watched the raging waters on both sides of the house, asking if anybody was still inside, to make sure all had evacuated.

A gentleman stopped by with his pickup, after the cleanup efforts began, with his business card (a car salesman down the street), who said if we needed any help, to call him.

The returned call from Assistant Fire Chief John Foley of the Hershey Fire Company, who said a high-volume electric pump was on the way, a 60-gallon-per-minute device that would clear the water out of our basement. It ran for three weeks straight, draining all the groundwater around us, until we were dry and out of danger.

The Carlisle Presby group of a dozen Lend a Hand volunteers who arrived to help “shovel out” our basement into a 30-cubic-yard dumpster, the largest available.

Several members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), who used their bare hands and some simple, manual car tools (I kid you not!) all the while dressed in their neatly pressed white shirts, slacks, and ties, to not only move, but to actually reposition our 2-ton garden shed, and would take nothing but a handshake.

The help we received from our church friends, Anne and Tom, who provided a warm shower as our hot water was out for about two weeks. It felt like years.

And many more.

What was amazing were the items actually saved:

• Some old tools that I thought were lost.

• Office supplies that I thought were long thrown out.

• Later on, I found even more books I had stored elsewhere. I looked at the collection that I separated and forgot, and shed a few tears.

• In the rebuilding and reorganization, we now have a good plan, and the basement has never looked so good.

And I am amazed at the selfless work of the volunteers and the support of friends from all over who came to rescue us from the worst natural disaster in Hershey’s history. Much was lost, and a whole lot was gained.

On the day the rains came.

And the people.

On whose intercession we received much-needed help

Thank you.