On Saturday, August 27, 2011 the Watershed Post launched its coverage of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene and its expected impact on the Catskills region of upstate New York. Below is the text of our homepage as it appeared throughout the Catskills flooding and its aftermath. Our coverage included a town-by-town list of damage, an interactive spreadsheet for tracking people stranded by the storm, a spreadsheet tracking relief resources for flood victims, a map of road closures updated by a volunteer GIS expert, and a live blog that allowed anyone on the site to post a question or information in realtime as the storm hit.
On Saturday, August 27, 2011, the aftermath of Hurricane Irene brought devastating flooding to the Catskills. The Watershed Post is keeping track of relief resources and information on this page and in Google Document spreadsheets, which are linked from this page. Please help us keep things up-to-date by emailing editor@watershedpost.com with "Relief Resource" in the subject line. To see our full coverage of Hurricane/Tropical storms Irene and Lee, including the now-archived Hurricane Irene live blog, click here. Click here to see Our town-by-town coverage of the storms.
Our Catskill Flooding spreadsheet: Donation and relief centers (click here to open):
This spreadsheet, which you can open in a separate window by clicking here, is a list of volunteer opportunities and places to give money.
The banner says it all: The CVS on Bridge Street in Margaretville is once again open for business. The pharmacy reopened on Friday, with a gloriously sunny May day to mark the occasion.
It's been almost two years after the Irene floods on August 28, 2011 destroyed the pharmacy, leaving little more than a pile of collapsed wreckage where it stood. The Freshtown grocery store next door, also heavily damaged in the floods, took almost nine months to repair, and reopened in May of 2012.
Evidence of the flood's passage can still be seen in parts of downtown Margaretville, especially on Main Street just east of the Cheese Barrel. But most of the village's storefronts have reopened, and it's business as usual on most of Margaretville's Main Street. With the iconic Bridge Street CVS no longer under construction, the village is beginning to look like its old self again -- and just in time for summer.
Above: The last FEMA trailer in the village of Schoharie being towed away from Mary and Jim Bryant's front yard on Thursday, April 4. Photo by Alison Bryant; used by permission of Schoharie Area Long Term Recovery.
The flood-ravaged village of Schoharie reached a big milestone last week, when the last FEMA trailer was hauled out of town for good.
In August of 2011, flooding from Tropical Storm Irene wreaked incredible damage on the Greene County town of Prattsville -- tearing houses off foundations, blasting through roads and buildings, and leaving a trail of toxic wreckage in its wake.
Over a year and a half since the Irene and Lee floods wreaked devastation on the Catskills, the long work of recovery is still going on.
This week, the Catskill Watershed Corporation announced a new initiative: a grant program to help nonprofits that were badly damaged in the 2011 floods. The program is open to any 501(c)3 organizations or state-chartered museums with buildings located inside New York City's Catskill-Delaware watershed. Read more
Above: January 2012 photo of contractors at a staging area in Cobleskill preparing to haul a three-bedroom temporary housing unit to a site in Prattsville, for survivors of the Irene floods. Photo by Hans Pennink; from FEMA website.
Now, with thousands of families left homeless in New York and New Jersey by the hurricane, those same federal officials are poised to spend more taxpayer dollars to buy brand-new trailers. Read more
Providing background, the report states, “substantially all of the town's books of original entry; the general and subsidiary ledgers; related accounting manuals records such as work sheet and spreadsheets supporting cost allocations; computations and reconciliations; as well as substantially all corroborating evidence in support of the financial statements were destroyed by Hurricane Irene and the subsequent flooding which also destroyed the town's headquarters.
“The scope of our work was not sufficient to enable us to express, and we do not express, an opinion on the financial statements,” the report states. Read more
On Thursday, August 30, the village of Margaretville came together to reflect on the Irene floods. Local videographer Jess Vecchione produced the video above, using footage taken at the ceremony. In it, she juxtaposes shots of the incredible devastation wreaked on the village of Margaretville a year ago with the voices of prominent local citizens talking about where Margaretville is today.
Middletown supervisor Marge Miller talks about why the ceremony of remembrance was held:
"We really needed something to say, 'We've made it, we're here, we still have struggles and concerns, but we're getting there.'"
"We as a community should celebrate how well we did, and now figure out how to make it a little bit of a plan, so that we know we can do it again." Read more
