More than a year after floods poured through Rotterdam hamlets, some residents are still working to get back in their homes.
David McKeon, a Pattersonville resident, fled his home at the end of Elm Street when he heard floodwaters crashing through the cellar door of the home he’s lived in since he built it in 1976. The water rose up 4 feet on the first floor, he said, or 11 feet from the basement.
“I literally heard the door blow open in the cellar and the water filled in,” McKeon said. His wife then grabbed a computer and a toothbrush before they ran out of the house.
Rotterdam Junction resident Bonnie Pedone saw her home at 2 Lock Street being flooded from an entirely different vantage point.
She had fled up a nearby hill once it was apparent the flooding wasn’t letting up. Along with her daughter, Maria, she urged other neighbors to follow. Driving out wasn’t an option for her, because the main road had flooded at both ends and blocked any exit.
“We asked one of the cops, or whoever, ‘What is the evacuation plan,’ and they said ‘We have none,’” Pedone said. “That is when we hightailed it out.”
She said her son drove his pickup truck through backyards and a dirt road before hiking the rest of the way up the rise. With some camping necessities and food, she watched floodwaters tear through Main Street.
“We had binoculars, so we could see the town filling up with water,” Pedone said. “The next day we came back … and it looked like a bomb had gone off.”
Both residents say they are hoping to be back in their repaired homes by Thanksgiving. McKeon has been living in a home he used to rent since the flood, while Pedone has been living in Colonie renting out a house from one of her son’s friends. The home had been listed, but was taken off the market so she could live there until she moved in back home.
According to Nathan Mandsager, the coordinator of the Flood Recovery Coalition for Schenectady County, there are still eight families working to get back in to their Rotterdam homes damaged by the 2011 flooding. The road to recovery has been far longer and more difficult than any could have imagined, though. After the murky, contaminated water receded, money became a main issue for many residents.
McKeon did have insurance, so FEMA didn’t provide him any assistance, and it took around 10 months before he received a check. He said it was around half of what he thought he’d get.
Pedone didn’t have flood insurance and did receive some help from FEMA, but it didn’t go far. Many people and businesses donated items needed to help repair homes, but by the time she had started renovation, most of the freebies were gone.
“I am just happy that I still have a house to rebuild,” she said.
McKeon said volunteers helped motivate him and raise his spirits as cleanup and renovations progressed at his home.
“If it weren’t for hundreds, literally hundreds of volunteers … they have come and stayed and enabled us for where we are now,” McKeon said. “You don’t get over something like this, you get through it.”
As he made initial repairs to his home he collapsed three times and was taken to the hospital, which slowed his return home. His two sons and daughter helped him and his wife.
The despair in Rotterdam Junction did not recede with the floodwaters, McKeon said, because now people carry anger about how the situation unfolded.
“There is a tremendous anger, because a large portion of what happened here could have been prevented had there been proper administration or proper planning,” he said. “There is some common sense of things that could be done that have to be done to eliminate this fear that so many people have that this could happen again.”
While his first impression was on the suddenness of the incident, his second reaction wasn’t one some might expect.
“My second reaction was to raise my hand and say, thank you Lord for 38 great years here,” he said. “I think that was a turning point in the whole attitude that I had. … It is actually easier to handle adversity than it is to handle success. Adversity keep you humble.”
He admits, if someone gave him a bulldozer during the first month after the storm, he would have demolished his home and left.
“I didn’t see through the fog of what was going on that there could be something good happening,” he said. “My wife and my faith brought me along and people started encouraging me.”
Even with renovated homes, there are some things that simply can’t be repaired.
“Losing things that can’t be replaced, I think that is hardest,” Pedone said. “I have nothing. I have a few things that my relatives gave me that they had but that is about it.”