Morning Call Editor-in-Chief Mike Miorelli and staff writer Tom Shortell contributed to this report.
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Morning Call: A day after Ida swamped the Lehigh Valley, residents muck out and size up the damage
September 7th, 2021 | In The News
Written by Anthony Salamone, Lief Greiss and Ryan Kneller for The Morning Call
What a beautiful day for a disaster.
Thursday was a day of eye-squinting sun, light breezes and dry air, even a taste of fall early on, but who could enjoy it? There was too much mucking out to do across the Lehigh Valley after Tropical Depression Ida dumped close to 8 inches of rain in spots and sent water rampaging into streets, parking lots and cellars.
The Lehigh River. The Little Lehigh Creek. The Jordan and Monocacy creeks. All the usual suspects contributed to flooding, and it will likely be some time before anyone can put a dollar amount to the damage.
“We are in the process of assessing the situation and we will know more once the floodwaters recede,” said Charlene Donchez Mowers, president of Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites, after surveying the flooding in Bethlehem’s Colonial Industrial Quarter along the Monocacy.
That low-lying area is no stranger to intense flooding during summer rainstorms, including several instances that have put a damper on past Musikfests. Ida’s remnants left the Luckenbach Mill, 1761 Tannery and other historic sites overrun by several inches of water.
In addition to structures, fences, benches, bushes and tree trunks also were partially submerged in the area, and Conestoga Street, which runs parallel to the quarter, was still closed at Union Boulevard about 7 p.m.
“I was looking at it from the Broad Street bridge,” Donchez Mowers said. “I just did not feel comfortable and didn’t want to send any staff members down there because the water is still too high. We won’t do anything until it’s all the way down.”
Like Donchez Mowers, more than a dozen people who were walking or driving across the Broad Street bridge stopped to view the vast flooding from the high vantage point.
David Rischmiller, who has lived a few blocks away from the quarter for more than 15 years, regularly checks out the scene in the historic area following heavy rains.
He believes the most recent flooding is on par with the water levels resulting from past years’ strong storms.
“The flooding almost always stops about halfway from the mill to the bridge,” Rischmiller said. “I think it would probably take something catastrophic for it to reach any further up.”
For all the damage in the Valley, the area was spared much worse. To the south, multiple funnel clouds and likely tornadoes were reported in the greater Philadelphia area, including a confirmed EF-2 tornado that traveled from Fort Washington-Upper Dublin Township to Horsham Township in Montgomery County with winds up to 130 mph.
A confirmed tornado across the Delaware River in New Jersey destroyed or damaged more than two dozen homes in the community of Mullica Hill. And the Schuylkill River and other waterways caused massive flooding. Philadelphia’s iconic Boat House Row was nearly submerged.
The wind and rain took down trees and power lines around the Valley, but there were no fatalities reported, despite dozens of water rescues as cars were swamped in flooded streets. Statewide, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency said, there were thousands of such rescues.
Ron Shirey, who has lived on Adams Island on the Lehigh River in Allentown since 1998, was on a business trip to Maine and returned home late Wednesday night to find 3 feet of water in his living room.
He spent the night in his truck and woke up Thursday to assess the damage to his property. It was the worst flooding Shirey has experienced since Hurricane Ivan dumped 4-8 inches of rain in September 2004, almost 17 years ago to the day.
Shirey said the Adams Island residents mark the possibility of floods by the gauge height on the Lehigh at Walnutport. Once it reaches 9 feet, residents brace for action. Wednesday’s hit 13 feet and Shirey knew he and the other residents would have water problems.
Shirey, who said he had flooding issues five times from 2004-06, said living on Adams Island comes with risk, but it’s worth it.
“I lived in Hawaii and lived through a half-dozen typhoons,” Shirey said. “It’s the price you pay to live in paradise.”
Looking over Adams Island from Buck Boyle Park, Susie Costello said the flooding was some of the highest she’s seen in 70 years living near the Lehigh. The highest was about 60 years ago, she said, when the water came up to the roof of a shop that once stood at the water’s edge.
Barbara Tognoli, who also grew up near Buck Boyle Park but now lives in Whitehall Township, judged the flooding from Ida worse than that of Hurricane Diane in 1955.
“There were cows and pigs floating down the river during that flood,” Tognoli said.
In Bethlehem, where Liz Valentin bought a home near Saucon Park in February and had all brand new furniture put in by April, Tropical Depression Ida’s rains swelled nearby Saucon Creek, flooding the basement and ground floor.
Valentin returned home to the 1800 block of Westmont Street after work Wednesday night and found water already over the wheels of cars parked on her neighborhood. Water crashed through her basement windows and her sump pump stopped working. With the water too deep to park in front of her house, she had to wade and swim a short distance to her front steps.
“The water got up to my basement ceiling and up to my waist on my first floor,” Valentin said, planning to spend the night on the second floor in her home with no electricity. “My first floor is now full of mud. Everything’s ruined.
“I must have called every hotel within a 40-mile radius and couldn’t find any vacancies anywhere,” she said. “I had to scatter my three kids among different relatives in Bethlehem because there’s no room for everyone at anybody’s house.”
Neighbor Crystal Kafarski said this is the second time in 13 months that she and her family have been displaced from their home in the 800 block of Dearborn Avenue.
In August 2020, flooding from Hurricane Isaiah forced the Kafarskis into a hotel for two days, two hours from any friends or relatives, leaving them wondering where to stay and how to get their three children to school.
“We still haven’t recovered financially from Isaiah,” Kafarski said. “We were displaced for four months and haven’t even been back in our home nine months and then this happened again.
Farther east, John Taylor, a Palmer Township resident, wasn’t especially concerned about his property next to Eddyside Park. He calls the spot, with its gazebo and a portable kitchen inside a shed, “heaven.”
While forecasters were still calling for the adjacent Delaware River to rise a few more feet, “everything’s movable,” Taylor said.
In Easton, Mayor Sal Panto Jr. said the city should have cleanup finished in time for a Sept. 11 memorial event and a cycling race, both scheduled Saturday.
“The good news is the timing is better for us, because it’s cresting earlier,” he said. “So we can spend [Friday] planning for the events Saturday.”
Panto and West Easton Mayor Dan DePaul said there there evacuations along an area where the communities meet called the Flats, including Lynn and Adamson streets off Lehigh Drive. Everybody was accounted for, they said.
On Sumner Avenue in Whitehall, a building housing La Moca Auto Service, Sumner Auto Sales, LS Notary and 2R Auto Repair was flooded by the Jordan Creek.
“The basement is so full of water you can’t even see the steps,” said Lillian Seda, who owns LS Notary.
Seda said she was able to clean out her business but others are still draining water. The cars in the lot have water damage, she added.
Other businesses were luckier. Water crept within 15 feet of the Hamilton Family Restaurant in Allentown, but the beloved Ham Fam was spared any damage beyond minor basement flooding that the sump pump was able to handle.
Owner Hadi Wakim said he closed early Wednesday night as the water crept closer, remembering how he fared last year during heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Isaias.
“I learned my lesson,” he said. “Last year we left here in a boat.”
