“We’re well on our way with recovery efforts, including road, bridge, and stream restoration,” said Shandaken supervisor Rob Stanley this August. “Every road is passable, but we still need some work to bring things back up to where they were, and we need mitigation to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“At first it was like an adrenaline rush. I felt like I was in the Second World War,” said German-born artist Rita Schwab, describing the aftermath of the hurricane, when her house in Mount Tremper filled with water almost to the ceiling of the first floor. “The National Guard and the Red Cross were coming in, my belongings were picked up with a backhoe — it was surreal. When all that wore off, I dislocated my hip with the shoveling, there was mold growing, I was having to tear out walls. I couldn’t work or make money for three months.”
Meanwhile, she was applying for recovery funds from FEMA and from insurance companies. She returned to the house for an estimated 20 different inspections and filled out reams of forms. “I got burnt out and depressed,” she recalled. “The building inspector gave me a hard time and made me do all this remodeling. I had to borrow money. FEMA didn’t give me anything. I’m in a lawsuit with the homeowners insurance company.”
Schwab applied to the county for a buyout program, but they were offering so little money, it didn’t seem worthwhile. “The happy ending is — it hasn’t totally come yet — that I have been using the house as a studio. I got awarded $5,000 from the New York State Business Recovery Program. I’m replacing insulation and sheetrock, but I’m no longer allowed to live there — the zoning has changed. I would have to raise the house 17 feet to live there.”
During the storm, Joe and Judy Livoti were evacuated from their Mount Pleasant home in a pontoon police boat. They returned to find a mud line three feet high on the walls and the contents of the house ruined. Volunteers organized by the Rotary Club came to help clear out the house. Within days, Joe Livoti and his son started tearing down sheetrock.
“We got help from a close friend of ours, a contractor, and his son,” explains Livoti. “The four of us ripped out everything down to the studs, and put in new insulation, wiring, plumbing, furnace, heating system. In four months, we were back in the house.”
Friends gave them furniture, and Livoti’s sister bought them a bed. “It was a humbling experience to have all these people so giving,” he said. “It still brings a tear to my eye, the camaraderie we had. I used to run a youth center in Pine Hill in the early Eighties. When the Rotary came, there must’ve been 70 or 80 people here, pushing mud, pulling out furniture. I heard the voice of one of my girls from Pine Hill, Bonnie, who I hadn’t seen since then. She had her three sons with her, all teens like she was back at the youth center. It was very emotional.”
Now life is almost back to normal, he finds. “The only thing you miss is that we were so used to having stuff and knowing where stuff was. The screwdriver, the passports — but we’re working through it.”
Flooded Kingston basements
Kingston, the seat of Ulster County’s government and home to much of its disaster preparedness infrastructure, escaped the worst of Irene’s wrath. The city did suffer flooding — firefighters and public works crews spent the days after the storm pumping out some 400 flooded basements.
Most of the damage was focused along the Rondout and Esopus creeks which flow through the city. Early in the storm, a bank on the Twaalfskill in the city’s downtown Wilbur neighborhood washed out, taking five utility poles with it. The destruction cut power to thousands of Kingston residents until city Department of Public Works crews were able to get earth-moving equipment to the site and rebuild the bank so new utility lines could be installed.
More critically, public works crews struggled to prevent potentially catastrophic flooding at Kingston Plaza. The low-lying plaza stands beside the Esopus, which serves as a stormwater drainage point for all of Uptown Kingston. An earthen berm and a pair of pumping stations were supposed to keep the low-lying plaza dry, even during severe storms. But one week after Irene, the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee blew through threatening to overwhelm the flood-control system and send the still swollen Esopus over the berm. Instead, crews manned auxiliary pumps day and night, holding back the creek and preventing major damage to the plaza businesses. Downtown at the city’s sewage treatment plant, meanwhile, workers were able to use a complex series of flow control maneuvers to prevent a major discharge into the Rondout Creek.
“We were pretty much ready in advance,” said Schupp. “The department took a proactive stance and we did pretty much everything in our power to keep things under control.”
A little more than one year ago, Elaine and Dennis Weiss refinished their longtime family home in the Town of Kingston with new living room furniture, carpets and a freshly updated kitchen with all-new shiny appliances and cabinets. Shortly thereafter, Irene ravished the Weiss’ home so violently only four exterior walls and two toilets were spared.
“We were underinsured,” said Elaine, who explained that FEMA gave the couple $3000 toward three months of rent and nothing more. The rest, she explained, came to the couple as low-cost long-term loans. Worse, she added, is the fact that more than half of the ground between the home’s foundation and the brook which flooded their home has eroded and continues to erode with every storm, leaving their home precariously “perched” less than six feet from its banks. “Every time it rains, water backs up into our yard. We are so worried,” she said.
The Weisses gives thanks for what truly matters to them. “I am so grateful everyone was okay. I had an 82-year-old aunt in a wheelchair living with us and she was okay.” Elaine explained.
