By Patricia Breakey
COLCHESTER, N.Y. — A Downsville, N.Y., woman heading home on Cat Hollow after visiting her aunt Tuesday night was trapped in the flash flood that washed away three homes next to the house where she took refuge.
Four people were missing Wednesday night as searchers halted their efforts until the morning because of darkness and safety concerns. Up to 8 inches of rain fell in two hours late Tuesday night, washing out roads and homes and slamming trees into bridges, officials said.
Downsville Fire Department First Assistant Chief Mark Mattson said Holiday Brook Road and state Route 206 or county Route 7, also known as Cat Hollow, were closed because of missing sections of road and damaged bridges. In addition, many landline phones were down and cell-phone service is unreliable.
Judy Bennett said Wednesday she was traveling about at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday on Delaware County Route 7 near Ackerman Acres Road when wires down across the road forced her to stop. The road runs between Roscoe and Colchester. She said she turned around and stopped at Barb and Dennis Gregory’s house.
She used the couple’s phone to call her husband, Dennis, who was home in Downsville, about 11 miles north. She said she barely had time to tell him where she was and why when phone service went out.
“The next thing I knew, water was coming into their house,” Bennett said Wednesday. “It just came so fast and it was all the way around their house. I watched as it picked up my pickup truck and moved it. We couldn’t get out, so we just went upstairs to the top floor.”
Bennett said the couple’s house was located next door to two trailers and a house that were washed away by the floodwaters.
“The Finkles and the Shuttses lived next door,” Bennett said. “Elaine Finkle and her husband, George, got out of their trailer, but when he went back to get her mother (Gertrude Melvin), they just couldn’t get her out before the trailer washed away.”
Bennett said Fred and Marjorie Shutts were also home when the wall of water washed their home away. The Shutts and Melvin were among the missing, and Melvin was presumed dead, officials said.
The water eventually began to recede, she said, but she and the Gregorys didn’t dare leave the home because they could hear the popping of live electric wires.
“About 11 p.m., the firemen came and said they were evacuating people and it was the last chance to get out. The firemen helped us walk out. Barb had no shoes because the flood had gone through the first floor.
“We got to the firetruck and got in, but when we came to the bridge near Hodge’s (former furniture store), the firetruck couldn’t get over,” Bennett continued, “so we got into a pickup truck that kind of maneuvered around the bridge. But at the second bridge, we had to walk across.”
She said she and the Gregorys are fine, but “it’s sad that there are other people who are not.”
Sal Saporito, of Sidney Center, N.Y., said he was coming home from New York City with two other men and heading toward Downsville on Cat Hollow when the brunt of the storm hit and water began to build up on the road.
“It hadn’t even been raining in Roscoe, and then suddenly there were sheets of rain,” he said Wednesday morning at the Downsville Firehall, where he was checking on the whereabouts of his black Ford Expedition. “There were four other cars behind me, and we all stopped.
“It was pretty scary,” Saporito said. “It was raining so heavy I couldn’t see. There was an inch of water on the road, and there were propane tanks and trees going by in the ditches beside the road. We didn’t think we were going to make it out alive.”
Saporito said they waited until the water subsided and then walked out with the people who had been in the other cars.
“There were about eight of us, including a guy with his daughter,” he said. “I finally got home about 2 a.m.”
Patricia Breakey writes for The Daily Star of Oneonta, N.Y.
