Colchester An elderly couple trapped for 11 hours. A son stranded in his home. Dozens cut off from safety.
On June 19, a flash flood in Delaware and Sullivan counties destroyed homes and roads, and killed at least two people. As they found themselves in the middle of a natural disaster, this is how a few of our local heroes saved their neighbors: His son was trapped, and that was all Roscoe firefighter Pete Johnston needed to know. He tied on his boots and grabbed two hiking poles to take pressure off his bad back.
Then he caught a ride with some fellow firefighters. They parked near the Roscoe Nursing Home and started walking. A downpour that would dump 8 inches of rain in two hours had created rivers on both sides of Route 206, so they walked up the middle of the road.
When the water ran knee-deep over the pavement, Johnston used the hiking poles to feel for ditches ahead of him. The men inched forward into the darkness. Downed wires lay in the water.
Lighting slashed the sky. Debris whizzed past on the current. "Obviously it wasn't our time because we had three or four different ways to die," Johnston said.
A 2-mile trek brought the firefighters to the home of Johnston's son, Dan, but a river rushed between them and Dan. The firefighters linked arms to make a human chain. They pulled Dan across, along with two other people and some dogs.
The rescue was one of several made by Roscoe firefighters that night as they saved a total of 28 people from marooned cars and homes encircled by water. They gathered the stranded one-by-one and slowly drove them to safety. All 28 of the rescued found a dry place to sleep that night.
At 6 a.m., the firefighters returned to the weather-torn scene and searched for the missing.
State Trooper Joe Decker had also headed up Route 206, into the storm. He met up with some Roscoe firefighters in a rescue truck, and they evacuated people from their homes. At Ackerman Acres Road, they hustled people off Route 206 to the high ground on the roadside.
Decker carried Catherine Finkle from her home, across rushing waters that covered two ditches and the road, as her husband, Raymond, followed. They barely got across. As conditions deteriorated, the rescuers had to leave some people behind, stranded.
Decker tried to reach his state police Chevy Tahoe, which had gotten him through three other floods, but a water-tossed car and the current blocked him. He abandoned the SUV and tried to jump the stream. The water swept him away, washing him 40 yards downstream.
Somehow, he grabbed onto something and pulled himself to safety. He headed back to Ackerman Acres Road. The rescuers couldn't help when the deluge took the stranded people and their homes.
By now, the phones were out. Police and fire radios were the only means of communication. The rain had poured for hours.
By 10 p.m., the waters had backed off.
The fire truck was stuck in the mud, so the rescuers hiked north, gathering people who'd been stranded in their cars, and evacuating more homes. The Tahoe was still working. They packed people into it and drove them as far south as they could.
The evacuees walked the rest of the way into Roscoe. Morning revealed the wreckage: utility poles snapped like breadsticks, roads washed away, piles of debris everywhere. Stephen Felter, a line supervisor with New York State Electric Gas, and Ed Kelting, a mechanic, ventured out to assess the power line damage.
They headed up Route 206 on a six-wheel ATV over mud and destroyed road until debris blocked their path. "So we got out and walked," Felter said. They hiked up a mound of rubble and saw cars on the other side.
The cars looked abandoned, but Felter and Kelting stopped to check them for people. Colchester An elderly couple trapped for 11 hours.
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