Almost every structure in New Hartford was under water Sunday when Beaver Creek rose out of its banks.
Mother Nature hits New Hartford – again
By ADAM HARRINGA Editor On Sunday, June 8, exactly two weeks after an EF5 tornado tore through New Hartford destroying over 50 homes, severe flooding damaged nearly every structure, forcing the entire town to evacuate.
With heavy rainfall upstream from New Hartford on Beaver Creek on Saturday night and early Sunday morning, water continued to rise all day Sunday. By 6 p.m. that evening, rushing water could be found at every point and the town was evacuated by boat.
(The following is the second part in a series of stories of cancer survivors in Grundy County, leading up to the annual Grundy County Relay for Life.)
Cheryl Kriz, a para educator at Grundy Center High School, has recently battled breast cancer. By the time a mammogram had detected a lump, it was already in Grade III. The cancer, Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma, was discovered on June 27 of 2006 – her and her husband Randy’s 25th wedding anniversary. [MORE]
Grundy Center community members volunteered their time last week to help with cleanup in Parkersburg.
Cleaning up Parkersburg
By ADAM HARRINGA Editor Community members, family, friends, and even strangers were quick to volunteer their time in Parkersburg and New Hartford after an EF5 tornado claimed eight lives and destroyed 222 homes and 22 businesses on Sunday, May 25. Among them were volunteers from Grundy County.
Only a few days after the storm, the process of cleaning up began, as volunteers poured in from all over the state. Among them was a group from Grundy Center and Holland, who dug in to help a couple they didn’t even know.
Every night after the storm, Parkersburg is patrolled by local law enforcement, the national guard and the Army reserve. Residents have an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew every night as well.
A relative calm after the storm After curfew in Parkersburg
By JUSTIN HILL Hampton Chronicle The meeting adjourned in the “Talk” – a staked-down, sand-brown canvas command center – and the door that was zipped half-way shut on the left side was pulled open.
Soldiers in digital camouflage-patterned ACUs (army combat uni-forms) tracked mud from the mushy slop outside after a day filled with mostly rain, slop that covered their tan boots over the toes, onto the gi-ant tent’s black mat floor that sloped slightly toward the door.
Major Dave Nixon sat behind a table, then paced while talking, but most listening, on his cell phone at the back of the tent. A three-foot by four-foot map of the war zone, di-vided by FEMA into five sectors, hung behind him on the silver can-vas wall, underneath the florescent tube lights – powered, along with laptops and two-way radio chargers, by a generator humming outside – that ran the length of the 30-foot long tent. More than 30 boxes of pizza, most of them just emptied, sat on a table on the left side of the temporary structure that kept the breeze and the chill of the falling evening off the soldiers who filled it. [MORE]
