Our Little Town Floods Yet Again

Leisure Run Flooding Keck Ave & Rt 28 New Bethlehem, PA July 19, 2019
(Photo Courtesy Tech Ready Professionals & RedbankValley.org)

Twenty-three years ago, July 19, 1996,  after weeks of rainy weather, the skies opened up and dumped more than a foot of rain on the Redbank Valley. The creek system, from Brookville to New Bethlehem, was inundated with floodwaters of Biblical, catastrophic proportions.  Twenty-three years later, on July 19, 2019, after weeks of rainy weather, the skies opened up and dumped heavy rains of the northern tributaries of the Redbank Creek, once again, flooding parts of New Bethlehem and the Redbank Valley.

For those of us who were here, back then in the summer of 1996, last night's flooding brought back a whirling mass of memories.  We each have our own memories, the stuff of our individual nightmares.  Whether it be of buildings being swept off their foundations, or trees and stumps racing down the deluge, or all of the “debris” - that only hours before had been homes and businesses – piled up against the Rt 28/66 bridge.  Each of us took away our own personal perspective of the flood.

The thing that stands out the most in my mind, after all these years, is the fact that when the sun came up the next morning, people in New Bethlehem started cleaning up the mess and rebuilding their town and their lives.  There was no standing around waiting for Harrisburg or Washington to tell them what to do and how to do it.  There was no crying for FEMA, or the National Guard, or waiting for some body to swoop in and make things right.  Our neighbors just went back to work and Life went on.

Housebound right now after back surgery, I didn't see the damage from Friday night's flooding until I went to church on Sunday.  There was no FEMA, no Pennsylvania Emergency Management, no government involvement in cleaning up the mess and putting things back to rights.  It's still a mess out there where the creeks washed through town, but the sun keeps coming up, and folks in the Redbank Valley clean up, rebuild and go on.

There are a lot of things that I have come to love and respect about folks here in the Redbank Valley and their strength and resiliency and their ability to come back from adversity may be the characteristics that I have come to respect and admire the most.  These lovely hills have a rugged, bony skeleton; a hardness and a harshness, a wildness beneath their rolling green surfaces.  Our neighbors here in Redbank Valley have a hardness and strength to match the hardness of this land that we call home.

Folks in New Bethlehem will clean up after this flood like they have cleaned up after the others.  The creeks will continue to flow downstream, seasons will come and seasons will go.  We will continue our lives and in some tomorrow there will be another flood.  Our neighbors will come forth after that flood too, and clean up and rebuild.  It is what we do.

God bless and keep everyone who is dealing with this particular flood and cleanup.