FLOOD LEVEL CONTINUES RISE, EVACUATIONS COMPLETED
Harrisburg, PA—Mayor Stephen R. Reed this afternoon reported that the Susquehanna River is continuing its rise and is expected to crest at its highest level around 6:00 p.m. tonight.
Multiple evacuations in Shipoke, Uptown and along Cameron Street were completed earlier. Over 2,000 persons are affected by evacuations. The river levels began to rise overnight at a faster rate, so the city began its first evacuations at 6:45 a.m., sooner than the originally planned 8:00 a.m. start, so that citizens would not have to leave with flooded roadways interfering.
Electrical power was shut-off to the Shipoke and immediately adjoining areas at 9:00 a.m. to prevent a recurrence of what happened in the January, 1996 flood, when an electrical wire started a fire that burned undetected in the 100 block of Conoy Street. It turned into a 4-alarm fire that burned down an entire block and, at one point, threatened to extend to the entire neighborhood.
Further flood-related information includes:
- Many streets are flooded and closed, including Cameron Street and much of Front Street;
- With state government offices open Monday, many workers will have to find alternate routes into the city as Cameron Street, Front Street, the 2nd Street exit from Interstate 83, and the Market St. Bridge are presently closed and may well still be closed for tomorrow morning’s rush hour;
- City police officers will be assigned to the 13th Street Corridor intersections in the morning to handle expected gridlock traffic using that street as an alternate route to the downtown; commuters are urged to leave for work at least thirty minutes earlier than usual as traffic back-ups can be expected throughout the region and city;
- Extra duty police are on the perimeter of evacuation zones to provide security and prevent mischief; under the Declaration of Disaster Emergency, a curfew is in place around the clock which prohibits persons who do not live in the zones to be there, with police authorized to arrest violators on the spot;
- In areas where electrical power is out, persons are being advised to carefully check any food left in refrigerators, which may have spoiled and should not be eaten;
- Do not allow children or others to play in flooded streets; a number of the heavy fifty pound, twenty-six-inch diameter manhole covers have been floated away by surging water, leaving dangerous underground chambers open beneath the water’s surface;
- Regular streetsweeping set for Monday has been suspended, so as to allow the streetsweepers and other public works crews to concentrate on flood area clean-up, which is expected to start Monday afternoon or evening as flood waters recede; the parking restrictions that normally exist for Monday’s streetsweeping areas are lifted as a result;
- Amongst the damage that has already occurred, City Island is largely covered by water, as is the Sunken Gardens and various other parts of Riverfront Park; a portion of the Riverfront Park embankment at Front and South Streets collapsed in a mud slide Friday night or Saturday morning, during the heavy rainfall that occurred then;
- The Harrisburg Water System, which serves the entire city and portions of four other municipalities, is in proper condition and customers do not need to be concerned about water quality; a report issued yesterday advising customers to boil water, which was not issued by the city, affected only United Water Company customers;
- The City is assisting United Water Company, which serves communities elsewhere on the East Shore; initially, the city supplied raw water to United, to that company’s North 6th Street water treatment plant; that plant has now been flooded; the city is now supplying fully treated treated and filtered water directly into the United Water System through three separate inter-connections built specifically for an event such as this; this city’s primary water supply comes from the DeHart Dam, which is more than full at this time;
- It will take days, perhaps weeks, before the full extent of damage, loss and cost from the flooding will be known; what is already known as that over two dozen vehicles are a total loss, along with more than twenty boats of varying sizes, and their observed damage on City Island and other city parks, damage and loss are known to now exceed $1 million and that amount will clearly rise;
- As flood waters recede Monday and Tuesday, damage assessment teams will enter flood zones; they will need to identify what initial clean-up and other responses need to immediately begin, such as street clearance, and will also then begin doing re-entry work to verify the safety of homes and businesses; these Re-Entry teams will include codes officers and utility company personnel (UGI, PPL) who will check each structure to ensure it is safe to reoccupy; this is an important safety precaution;
- City crews have an inventory of machinery and equipment, such as front-end loaders, fire hoses, streetsweepers, pumps, barricades, portable signs and other gear already prepared for the work;
- Flooded areas where narrow streets exist—such as Shipoke—will have temporary parking restrictions banning any vehicles from parking until the streets are cleared and streetsweepers have finished their work; in the case of Shipoke, neighbors can park in the motel parking lot; the temporary parking restrictions will be short-lived;
- The Pride of the Susquehanna Riverboat, normally docked at City Island, was sailed to the southern end of McCormick Island upriver to ride out the flood; the several boat captains that operate the vessel are living on-board, fully stocked with food and beverages, to secure the boat and sail it back to City Island when the river level drops; meanwhile, the riverboat’s docks have been damaged, so it is possible a temporary mooring will have to be set-up on the Island;
- Trivia Facts of the Day: Shipoke neighbors, knowing their electrical power would be off starting Sunday morning, held a cook-out Saturday night, using up steaks, shrimp and whatever else was in their refrigerators; meanwhile the horses that are corralled at City Island have remained there; the building with the horse stalls is at the Island’s highest point; the city’s handler has walked across the Walnut Street Bridge, which is closed to the public, to feed and groom them on their regular schedule during the flood.
- Many area residents are curious about the flooding event. Most areas of the riverfront are fully open for public visitation. The Market Street Bridge is also open to pedestrians and bicycles—but not for vehicles (the bridge’s West Shore entrance is flooded). The only areas where the public cannot go into are the evacuation zones, such as Shipoke.
- Harrisburg Hospital in the city’s downtown is fully open and operating and has been so throughout the flood; employees and patients, including emergency ambulances, have had full access at South Front and Chestnut Streets and South 2nd and Chestnut Streets; because parts of South 2nd Street are flooded, including various surface parking lots used by the hospital, all hospital employees, starting at 5:00 a.m. Monday, should park at the Harrisburg East Mall and the hospital will bus them to and from the hospital’ nursing students originally set to be at the hospital on Monday are cancelled and a new employee orientation will be rescheduled.
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