AGNES: 50 YEARS
Fifty years ago, Tropical Storm Agnes drenched the Eastern Seaboard, stalling over parts of Pennsylvania. The storm left a path of destruction hundreds of miles long and smashed records. Basements flooded, streets turned into canals and thousands of people headed to shelters. To this day, Agnes remains a benchmark by which all other storms in Harrisburg are measured.
‘Such tremendous loss’Sue Gleiter sgleiter@pennlive.com
She was powerful, relentless and left behind a path of destruction so devastating people still talk about her today.
Fifty years ago, Tropical Storm Agnes pummeled Pennsylvania, earning the title of worst disaster in state history.
The storm tore a path of destruction hundreds of miles long, south from the headwaters of the Susquehanna River in western New York to southern York County at the Maryland line, just north of where the river enters the Chesapeake Bay.
Tens of thousands of people had to flee as raging waters tore houses from foundations, ripped up cemeteries and smashed boats and piers, leaving thousands of cars, homes and businesses underwater.
When it was over, an estimated 48 Pennsylvanians had lost their lives — the most of any state — and 65,000 homes and 3,000 businesses were destroyed.
‘LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD’
The rain was relentless. Agnes arrived on June 21, projected as a much-weakened version of the storm that had just battered Florida.
But then it stalled over the Susquehanna River Basin. For four days, it dumped 10 to 18 inches of rain over central Pennsylvania and western New York. When the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg crested, “650 billion gallons of water gushed through Harrisburg, where the normal river volume is 23 billion gallons a day,” according to The Evening-News at
the time. Official records put the river at 33.27 feet, a whopping 16 feet above flood stage.
Louise Harden of Lemoyne recalls driving from the West Shore to Harrisburg and seeing the destruction.
“It was so devastating,” she said. “It looked like the end of the world, all the stuff from the river. It was like silt. Everything was gray like you would see on the moon.”
Nearby creeks and tributaries, including the Conodoguinet and Yellow Breeches, spilled over their banks. Water filled basements and turned roads into rivers.
The rapidly rising water forced an estimated 150,000 Pennsylvanians from their homes, including nearly 100,000 people
evacuated in Wilkes-Barre, the worst-hit area of the state. In Harrisburg, hundreds of homes and businesses, including the first floor of the Governor’s Residence, filled with water.
Shelters were set up in schools, churches and hotels. Many people were caught unprepared and had to be rescued by boat and helicopter from their homes, camps and river islands.
“I remember how many people had such tremendous loss of everything — their history, their pictures. A lot of those kinds of things you can’t get back again,” said Deborah Weaver of Hampden Township.
In her wake, Agnes left memories of mud, flooded basements, vanished homes and lost lives.
‘IT JUST SETTLED RIGHT HERE’
Nobody expected Agnes to unleash so much power in central Pennsylvania.
A trace of rain was predicted here as Agnes raged across the Florida Panhandle, barely a threat some 1,000 miles from the Keystone State. The Harrisburg forecast on June 20 called for remnants of Agnes to likely bring some precipitation with highs in the mid-70s.
By the next day, a Wednesday, the storm picked up steam as it moved out to the Atlantic Ocean, then looped back, drenching Pennsylvania and much of the Eastern Seaboard until the weekend.
“I just remember the weather reports that it stalled. Instead of moving through it stalled. That’s why we got such a downpour. It just settled right here,” said Ed Baumgardner of New Cumberland.
Baumgardner, 82, survived a harrowing incident in the house where he still lives. As his sump pump struggled to keep up with the volume of water seeping into the basement, Baumgardner figured he’d clean the pump’s filter. Suddenly, a window blew open, sending water pouring into the basement.
He pulled himself off the floor, climbed onto a chair to shut the window and gashed his hand. The house shook as he walked upstairs, planning to head to the doctor’s office. Part of a basement wall collapsed from the pressure of rising water.
“It was just a pile of rubble,” Baumgardner said. “It just fell in from the top to the bottom.
With his wife, Gertrude, and their daughter in tow, the family headed to a neighbor’s house where they spent the night. Baumgardner managed to walk to the doctor’s office and had his hand stitched up.
“The water was rushing. I could see it in front of my house. It was an absolute river. It was at least knee-deep and swift. It could knock you down if you weren’t careful,” Baumgardner said.
WAS QUICK’
‘THE WATER
As the days passed, it was clear the region was in the middle of a major disaster.
Homes in Lower Paxton Township were heavily hit as the Colonial Park and Paxtonia fire companies reported pumping water from eight basements, including those on Lockwillow Avenue and Devonshire, Berryhill, North and South roads.
Traffic slowed to a crawl in the city, particularly during the exodus from state government offices late in the afternoon as many streets in Harrisburg turned into canals.
The Pennsylvania Farm Show parking lot and neighborhood resembled a lake, and Cameron Street from Herr to Maclay streets was underwater. By nightfall, flooding was reported across the region from Hershey to Camp Hill.
As the storm started, Louise Harden
SEE 50 YEARS, S3
‘So many people lost so much’Middletown is shown during Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972. PennLive files Guardsmen evacuate residents of Wormleysburg during Tropical Storm Agnes. 109th Public Affairs Detachment, Pennsylvania Army National Guard Debris stacks up against the turnpike bridge at the Swatara Creek in Dauphin County during Tropical Storm Agnes. PennLive files The storm left behind memories of mud, of flooded basements and of lost homes and lives.
This June 23, 1972, photo shows people being rescued by boat from their homes to dry ground after remnants from Tropical Storm Agnes forced the Susquehanna River to overflow its banks, causing heavy flooding in Harrisburg. The river reached its high-water mark on June 24 at 33.27 feet, some 16 feet above flood stage. The crest is still the highest level ever recorded in Harrisburg. Associated Press file
Continues from S2 pulled into the parking lot at The Patriot-News offices on Market Street in Harrisburg where she worked in the classified ad department. Rain was steadily falling.
A few hours later, a building maintenance man urged Harden to move her red Volkswagen Beetle to higher ground. Floodwaters grazed the top of her car’s tires. “It was rising, and it was like you better move it now,” she recalled. “The water was really quick.”
Market Street experienced significant flooding during the storm. Water rose several feet and filled the nearby underpass. One of those who died was a Patriot-News telephone operator who did not want to give up her post in the storm.
Doug Dohne, a retired Patriot-News copy editor, said the newspaper’s publisher, John Baum, respected Emma Parker’s decision to stay in the office. But he recalls that as the water rose, Parker changed her mind and Baum arranged for a motorboat and crew to meet her at the front door.
“Her first step into the boat was her last. It capsized, she fell into the muddy water and her body was recovered far downstream,” he said.
Newspaper production was halted on June 22 when the building housing the presses on Market Street flooded. Once at home, Harden said phone service was cut off for days. She wondered when she would get the call to return to work.
“The only resource I had was to watch the news, and a lot of the other companies were calling in, saying, ‘Tell our employees to come back to work, ” she said.
The water climbed from the Patriot-News basement over desktops on the first floor. The paper didn’t publish again until June 28.
“Arriving at the office, I found my paycheck had floated to the top of my typewriter and was caked with mud. I never did cash it. I still have it after all these years,” Harden said.
SENDING IN A RESCUE HELICOPTER
In Cumberland County, water breached the Conodoguinet and Yellow Breeches creeks, swelling into homes and covering vital water and sewage plants. Several homes along the Conodoquinet in Country Club Hills saw water up to the second floor.
Water reached the first floor of homes along Pennsylvania Avenue when a 10-foot wide culvert underneath Interstate 83 could no longer handle the flow. About 120 families in New Cumberland were forced into makeshift quarters at the American Legion post home as the Susquehanna River rose not far from the business district along Bridge Street.
Weaver, now a Hampden Township resident, was 15 and visiting Bailey Island, a small island north of the turnpike bridge in the Susquehanna River. There, her family rented a farmhouse with a large garden.
The island was a haven for boating, fishing and water skiing, and a vacation away from their New Cumberland home.
Never did they think a place reserved for relaxation would quickly turn into a danger zone. Weaver recalls the forecast calling for no significant flooding.
“On the island, we were just thinking it’s rainy, it’s really raining. We could see the water going up,” she recalled. “We got to that point it was too late. There was no way we could get off. It was too high.”
Weaver said the water unexpectedly rose several feet in a matter of hours. Soon, they recognized that they were trapped.
“At some point, we realized they were sending a helicopter for us. My shoe came off in the cornfield, the mud was so deep,”
she said. “I’m sure we looked terrible, mud up halfway to our knees because the ground was so wet and muddy.”
The helicopter took the family to the Capital City Airport in Fairview Township. Weaver remembers a sense of relief.
‘IT SMELLED BAD’
Gov. Milton Shapp declared a state of extreme emergency with civil defense officials saying no part of the state would be left untouched. President Richard Nixon declared a federal disaster.
Cleanup was a long, arduous process.
Jim Bollinger of Hampden Township was 18 at the time and living on Calder Street in Harrisburg. He mowed lawns at the time for money but turned his efforts
to assist with flood cleanup.
“It smelled bad. Mud got on everything, and it was all crusted. It was dry and smelled like the river. It was terrible,” he said.
Water had filled his family’s basement. His mother and siblings and grandparents were split between two evacuation centers: Camp Curtin Middle School and an Allison Hill church. An estimated 3,200 people were taken to 19 shelters throughout the city.
Bollinger stayed with his then-girlfriend, Diane, who is now his wife, and delivered food, money and clothes to his family at the centers. During one trip, he watched Nixon’s helicopter take off. Nixon paid an unannounced visit to Harrisburg to survey the damage and met with evacuees at the then-William Penn campus of Harrisburg High School.
Bollinger recalls major flooding in various sections of the city, including Cameron Street, where the Paxton Creek swelled to the size of a river.
“I remember Italian Lake became part of the Susquehanna, which stretched from Third Street in Harrisburg to Wormleysburg,” he added.
Harrisburg Mayor Harold Swenson issued a curfew restricting anyone not engaged in rescue operations from walking or driving on city streets.
Flooded homes gradually became accessible, and a large portion of uptown could be reached by foot. Many homes showed high water marks of 6 feet or more. The public works department began hosing down muddy streets followed by six street sweeping trucks donated by Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo.
TREMENDOUS LOSS
For those who lived through Agnes, the devastation and destruction are hard to forget. To this day, Weaver said the loss, from lives and homes to material possessions such as photographs, is most memorable.
“I remember for years people wanting to donate to these people who lost everything. Where were they going to live?” she said.
In the city, trucks and heavy equipment removed thousands of tons of waterlogged debris. Equipment from seven contacting companies joined the mechanized force to make sweeps of the city streets in what seemed an unending challenge.
“The task was fraught by heartache in the hardest-hit areas of the city where precious personal belongings, ruined by the flood, were scooped up by front-end loaders and deposited in the blackened, soaking heaps on the trucks,” according to a Patriot-News story at the time.
Weaver recalls the utter devastation, something that remains etched in her mind a half-century on. She hopes to never see it again: “For people like me, it was scary to live through. ... We made it through, whereas so many people lost so much.”
Residents remember the devastation
Chris Mautner cmautner@pennlive.comRecently, we asked readers to share their memories of Tropical Storm Agnes and the devastating flooding it caused in 1972.
We were — forgive the pun — deluged with responses from people who recalled all too well the damage wrought by the storm, which dumped up to 18 inches of rain on parts of Pennsylvania and resulted in the Susquehanna River cresting more than 15 feet above flood stage.
Here are some of those recollections, lightly edited for length and clarity: ‘You could have sat in a boat and dropped the ball through the basket’
I was 16 at the time and living with my family in New Cumberland. At Borough Park in New Cumberland, there were two full basketball courts close to Yellow Breeches Creek. The water was so high you could have sat in a boat and dropped the ball through the basket. When the floodwaters receded, an oil truck had washed up on the bank near the horseshoe pit area. There were also hundreds of articles of clothing all through the park that must have started out on people’s clotheslines and had washed down with the flood.
I reported to work that morning to my summer job at Bricker’s Ice at Eighth Street in Lemoyne. The water was up to my ankles eight blocks away from the river. The engine room was flooded and inoperable. The ice was starting to melt. Roy Bricker sent us home for the day.
John Kambic
Commuted by helicopter
We had just moved to Dauphin from Harrisburg. At the time, my father was a firefighter in the city. It was all hands on deck for emergency services at that time. After working three days straight he was granted leave but could not make it to Dauphin.
He was able to hitch a ride on a National Guard helicopter and landed in the ballfield in Dauphin. The next day, he flew back to Harrisburg for another three days.
Also, my grandfather was performing water rescues as the calls went out for boats. He was in the Shipoke area and his motor failed. He tied up to a telephone pole and needed to be rescued himself. All that was left of the boat was the rope still tied to the telephone pole.
Mike Starner
‘Entire piece of the property washed away’
I was a tour guide at Fort Hunter and there was an amazing stone carriage house containing several weaving looms and other antiques as well as an area with gifts for sale. It was located at the corner of the river and creek. This entire piece of the property washed away during the flood, looking as if it never existed. There was a big rock in the creek bank with initials carved into it from the 1700s, I believe, that was washed away as well.
Those who built the house knew how to site it on the property as the water came up on the lawn, but the mansion was not touched during the flood. I will never forget seeing all the debris washed up in the property and in the trees lining the river.
Denise Mummert Husband
‘How much more can we take?’
I was a Red Cross volunteer and assisted with running a shelter at Rev. Morecraft’s church at 17th and State streets. We were receiving folks from the Shipoke area. One elderly lady brought her cat with her (we didn’t know she had it) and it got away from her inside the shelter. We also had a service dog in the shelter. This did not go well, and I got bit by the cat and the National Guard had to take me to get a tetanus shot!
In order to get to the shelter, I had to take a taxi and I had no cash, so I wrote a check, but the taxi driver wouldn’t accept it because I was on my way to the shelter.
Acts of kindness were abundant during that time. As the water receded, we helped folks get back home. We had some folks who needed to get to their pets. I remember going to a house near the old Patriot-News building (on Market Street) and the mud and muck made it hard for the owners to get inside their house. Their pets were safe, but the house was unlivable. The fires on Second Street were my undoing. It was like, “How much more can we take?”
Linda Farling
Supporting the National Guard
During (Tropical Storm) Agnes, I was a member of the 271st Mobile Communications Squadron of the Pa. Air National Guard, which was headquartered at Harrisburg International Airport. I was put in charge of a four-man team that was sent to Scranton with a well-equipped communications van and power unit. A similar team was sent to Wilkes-Barre.
Our mission was to support the Pa.
Army National Guard with a direct communications channel back to the Harrisburg area while they maintained law and order in the affected areas. We set up at the National Guard Armory in Scranton where the Red Cross was also operating. We ate pretty well! We were there for about a week, and it was a memorable and rewarding experience.
Glenn R. Kurzenknabe‘We were in immediate danger’
In June 1972, we were a young family living in Sunbury. We had three children ages 4, 2 and 3 months. Our home was located four blocks from the Susquehanna River and the wall protecting the city’s lower-lying areas from the river.
We were on vacation and came home a day early because of the weather forecast of the projected storm Agnes.
The rain started at 2 a.m. very heavy and continued through the night. At 8 a.m., I decided to take a walk down Fourth Street to see exactly how travel conditions were. At the underpass on Fourth Street, I found myself in waist-high water and retreated. Then I walked north of Fourth Street. The water was not as high, but it would not be safe to drive a car through it.
When I returned home, my wife informed me our basement was flooding.
Josie, a woman that worked with me and a lifetime resident of the city who lived through the floods of the 1930s, informed my wife we were in immediate danger and invited us to move our family into her home.
My wife packed bare essentials into a small suitcase, and I stopped at a National Guard transport truck and asked him if he would transport us to the hill sections of the city, which he did.
At that point, we were two kids with a young family just starting out in life, and if that wall broke we would lose everything.
John KatulisAdventure in spite of tragedy
It started with rain. Relentless rain. Torrents of it. And after days of it, my 14-yearold self could no longer be restrained by my mother or constrained by Mother Nature. I crafted rain gear out of a red plastic batting helmet acquired at a Phillies game giveaway and a black plastic trash bag with cutouts for my arms and head. Fourteen-year-old craftsmanship, however, was no match for Agnes, and I found myself drenched minutes after venturing out. That didn’t stop me from exploring my neighborhood of Westfield Terrace, which sits at the base of River Mountain between the New Cumberland Army
Depot and Capital City Airport.
Our community was built on a gentle slope, sparing most homes from nothing more than a damp basement. But anywhere the water couldn’t escape caused ponds to form and a few neighbors had foundation walls collapse or basements fill under the unrelenting deluge.
I made my way to where my street (Boeing Road) intersected with Old York Road and was alarmed to see several inches of water coursing past the corner that was my school bus stop. Old York Road was now a swift stream joining the Yellow Breeches to all of the marshes outside New Cumberland and on to the Susquehanna River miles away. And the water level was rising. I could see it grow along the cars abandoned on the road, first to the tires, and on to the hubcaps.
When the sun finally came out, neighbors gathered along the new stream bank to watch the spectacle. The water level was now all the way to the top of the little ball on the car’s antenna. All of it chocolate brown and churning with debris. Branches, propane tanks, toys. Carp forged their way upstream on what was now Old York Road Creek, like salmon in a nature movie.
We all came to the same realization. Our neighborhood was now an island. Someone, somewhere nicknamed our community “Monkey’s Island” after the attraction at the old Hersheypark Zoo. And somehow, someway, my dad became its mayor. This was an entirely ceremonial position. We all knew who was really running the show — our moms. They’d check on each other and make sure everyone had enough to get by.
All the while, myself and my cadre of friends rode our bikes looking for adventures. Word went out that one of the gravesites in nearby Mount Olivet Cemetery had washed out a little, exposing the concrete box that held the casket. One by one, we dared each other to gaze down into the grave. To be honest, all that was showing was a small corner of the box. But to childhood brains, this was the stuff of legend.
A few days later, matters took on a much more serious turn. Rumor had it that some chlorine tanks at a nearby water filtration plant broke loose, threatening anyone downstream with exposure to toxic gas. An alarm went out, and I found myself in the back of my parents’ car following a parade of traffic to the parking lot near the Army Depot’s baseball fields. There on the fields were Chinook helicopters waiting to evacuate us. Women and children first. It hit hard to leave my dad, and all the dads, behind.
Goodbyes were said and desperate embraces shared. One by one, the choppers rose into the air with every seat filled and every inch of the floor carpeted in refugees. We flew on across the West Shore, my eyes glimpsing a landscape punctuated with lakes that never existed a week before.
We landed at the Mechanicsburg Navy Depot and were ushered into a large warehouse full of fellow refugees. Before I entered, I saw a military Jet Ranger helicopter land. Jet Rangers were the kind of helicopters VIPs used. Out popped a bunch of dads, mine included. Of course the mayor of Monkey’s Island would get VIP treatment.
The Navy Depot was abuzz with scads of people, all displaced by Agnes. My buddies soon discovered a veritable tower of snack cakes and cases of soda. Food everywhere. We chowed down on all of it, ensuring countless future dental visits. Despite the sugar rapture, the idea that we were stuck there hit home. None of us brought so much as a spare pair of underwear. What would happen to our pets? What would happen to us?
That answer came sooner rather than later. The chlorine tanks were apparently found or were never a danger, though I never knew the complete story behind that whole kerfuffle. We were sent home.
I got to fly in a Chinook helicopter for the second time that day, though I was significantly heavier with all the snack cakes and soda I could jam in my pockets.
In the days that followed, water levels diminished until Old York Road Creek became Old York Road again, with the waterlogged hulks of cars strewn over a muddy roadway. The mud stank and we avoided it, going back to our usual games of baseball and arguing about whether so-in-so was safe or out. It was during one of those games that a plume of smoke rose from the airport. We rode our bikes to the scene of red lights flashing and fire suppressant foam spraying from airport fire trucks. A private helicopter crashed. People lost their lives. We watched in silence. We had just flown in helicopters and knew the implication. One by one, we went back to our game and slowly resumed the normal day-to-day of summer vacation.
(Tropical Storm) Agnes, it would seem, is now the stuff of lore and a historical event some 50 years old. But to me, it was more than that. It was a raging river where sleepy marshes now lie. A torrent to watch carp swim upstream. It was an island, Monkey’s Island, where boys road the streets in search of adventure. And found it in spite of the devastation and tragedy that was Agnes. Mike Silvestri
Continues from S4
Two-story piles of debris
I was 11. One of my dad’s co-workers and family came and stayed with us as their house in Lenker Manor was underwater. Most vivid memory was my grandmother, who lived in Kingston — her house was flooded. The only thing left was items on top of a bureau on the second floor. My other grandmother lived on the hill in Wilkes-Barre and we took her and others in. I remember the National Guard trucks going up I-81 to assist. My dad and others gutting my grandma’s house to the studs and the two-story piles of debris. I found two pieces of her cookie jar. She gifted it to me in 1983 when I got married. She and her husband started over in their 60s, living in a FEMA trailer in the yard while their home was rebuilt. No flood insurance.
Cathy Fagan‘A sea of mud’
I am a pediatrician and my pediatric office was located at 2800 Green St. in Harrisburg.
I was off duty June 24, the day of the flood. The office staff and the doctors on duty decided to close early so they would not become trapped in the building. The very important Accounts Receivable were left out on the desk.
The next day, the water had partially receded and I was able to get on the South Bridge. They were not allowing anyone into the city, but because I was a physician I was allowed to get off Route 83 and go to a back way to uptown Harrisburg and the Polyclinic Hospital. I went to the roof of the Kline Building, a part of the Polyclinic Hospital. From this vantage point, I could see amphibious vehicles on Third Street and that the water had receded from the office building. One of the “Ducks” was able to transport me to the office and I entered a sea of mud. The water marks on the walls were 6 feet high and covered the Accounts Receivable with mud. The patients’ charts were swollen from the water in the metal file shelves. Mud was on the outside, but the tight swelling kept the mud out of the patients’ records.
I hosed the mud off the Accounts Receivable and took them to the empty third floor of the Kline Building and spread them out to dry. On following days, we pried the patients’ records out of the shelves and took them to the Kline Building to dry.
We started seeing patients at our Cedar Cliff office on the West Shore. This is how we recovered from the flood and saved most of our records.
James JonesBasement flooded
The night the Agnes storm hit, my father was returning from a business trip. My mother left to pick him up at Harrisburg Airport in the pouring rain. On their return while driving through Highspire and Steelton, the water rushing through the streets came up to their hubcaps.
In the meantime, our 100-year-old farmhouse in a low-lying area near Mechanicsburg began to flood.
Since we often got an inch or two of water in the basement after a hard rain, we had a sump pump. The machine was working hard, yet the water kept rising. In an hour or two, the water rose above the level of the pump. The pump continued to operate but couldn’t keep up. Eventually, it stopped due to debris blocking it and the motor burned out. My parents arrived home to a basement flooded with over 2 feet of water.
We had no fresh water and couldn’t flush our toilets for over two days. A fireplace helped warm the house.
The fire department was swamped with helping people pump out houses, so a neighbor lent us their swimming pool pump. Several of us waded through cold, dirty water in the basement positioning the hoses.
The fire department said the flooding may have prevented the basement walls from collapsing due to the high water table.
My father worked at a state office building on Cameron Street and was unable to go to work for several days. Unfortunately, many records stored in the basement of the building were destroyed.
On the other hand, I still had a job. At age 15, I picked strawberries at Ashcombe Farm for 12 cents per quart. Despite being June, it was freezing cold and I was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. To my great relief, my mother arrived carrying the ugliest jacket I’ve ever seen and I was flooded with gratitude.
Lynn DavisWater rescue in Dauphin
It was raining at my home at the time along the Towpath (River Road). I had decided not to travel up to State College to see my girlfriend, there was a lot going on in the little town of Dauphin. The high water had already swept away our dock and fishing boat. In seconds, they were out of sight. The height of the river was already against the foundation of the house and rising quickly. I decided to leave the property, which my parents had already left, and stay at the firehouse in town.
The next day, the fire chief asked for help to rescue a man stranded and holding on to a gas station sign all night at the west end of the old Clarks Ferry Bridge. A driver, two other volunteers and I reached the old bridge and met with a state trooper. The water level was getting close to just under the bottom of the bridge, and the driver said, “Let’s go across.” The officer was already unloading a small craft from a trailer.
The water was coming down swiftly toward us from the wide highway at the old Sled Works building. The boat was put in the water with all of us holding on to it
as the very brave trooper climbed aboard, and what happened next, I will never forget. The engine was running and was put into gear and he took off. Within seconds, the motor suddenly shut down. Thankfully, the boat came right back to us and we grabbed the boat with our hands and arms. The engine was started again and away he went. After a few minutes, which seemed like an hour, the boat appeared coming back down to us. We again grabbed the boat, but this time there were two in the boat. The rescued man was lying down and looking very blue in color and shaking out of control but alive. ...
We put the boat on the firetruck, and as we got turned around and headed back across to the Harrisburg side of the bridge, halfway across I looked down and noticed the Susquehanna River was now coming through the open slats on the side walls of the bridge and the water was coming onto the bridge. If we would have arrived an hour or two later, the rescue would not have been possible.
I was the youngest one there that day, so if the other people that helped are still living, my thanks to you and to the state trooper who risked his life when he got
into that boat. The man that was rescued lived. And my girlfriend in State College has been my wife for 45 years. Things finished very well.
David FritzMonitoring the trucks
I was employed at the time by the state of Pennsylvania as an environmental protection specialist in the Department of Health (later called DER). I had two assignments during and immediately after the storm.
First, I was assigned to the Farm Show parking lot to monitor the many dump trucks that were arriving there with solid wastes from the Front, Second, Third and Cameron street areas. I was to check that none of the trucks had any vegetative spoilage, only solid wastes of furniture, etc. I saw many grand pianos, sofas, chairs and water-logged materials along with mufflers, car parts, rolls of hemp rope and parts from stores on Cameron Street, homes uptown and Susquehanna Township.
My next assignment was to drive to Lykens to place embargo tags on all the bottles of alcohol in the Lykens VFW or Legion on Main Street. That assignment, however, was delayed until bulldozers were able to remove the very large boulder and culm bank wash from Main Street so I could get to the booze.
To pick up the state car for the drive to Lykens I had to walk across the Mulberry Street Bridge into Harrisburg. From the bridge, I could see that water from the cement-walled creek that runs behind Cameron Street had flooded most of Cameron Street covering cars at the base of the Mulberry Street Bridge ramp that was used for entrance and exit from Cameron Street. I recall that many area residents called this creek “S--- Creek” because it carried sewage from local businesses and blood from the Swift Meat Packing slaughterhouse.
On my return to Harrisburg, I found that Spring Creek had flood the area roads and there was no access to Spring Creek Drive, Twin Lakes Drive or Dowhower Road. At the intersection of Galion and Sweetbriar streets, water was rushing like Niagara Falls out of a neighbor’s garage and there was no way to get to our new home, which was still under construction.
Terry R. NeumyerEvacuated from city
This happened when I was still single and living in downtown Harrisburg in an apartment at Second and State streets, with my one brother and a very good friend. Harold Swenson was mayor. ...
We were all listening to the radios and TV. Swenson gave the order to evacuate i m mediately — it was about 9 p.m. We had lost our electricity but had a transistor radio. I called my parents, who lived on Second Street, that I would pick them up. As I drove up, the water was beginning to come up on the street. I got my parents. ... We made our way to my brother’s home off of Linglestown Road, near the then-Blue Ridge Country Club. We had absolutely no idea how bad this would get.
The next day, my brothers and I drove to the Zembo Mosque, which was a staging area. We got on a motorboat and went toward Second Street, and we were stunned! The Italian Lake and the river had connected, and we went up Second Street, and the water was about 5 to 6 feet in everyone’s home. We got up close to my parents’ home and could see everything on their first floor was underwater — my father’s beautiful piano was floating out the back of their home through the walls. I felt like this must be a dream, and listening to the transistor radio in the boat, we realized this was not just Harrisburg, but cities all along the river. ...
It was a very frightening few days until the waters receded back to the river. The worst part was the cleanup. We all had to throw out everything on the first floors. My mother had a massive heart attack soon after the cleanup as she was so overwhelmed, and none of us really realized how physically sick this made her and so many others. ...
One very beautiful and emotional feeling for me was to help others and see others helping, and many helping who were not hit at all by the flooding. People came from all over, with needed supplies for the cleanup and food. ...
When something like this actually happens to your own living and working area, rather than watching flooding and fires somewhere else on TV, you are so sad for them. But when it happens to you, you can’t even imagine that at some point things will ever be normal again, and that you will move on, but you can and will.
Corky Goldstein“The river climbed with utter abandon, moved rapidly into city streets. It tugged at the underpins of the big bridges. It pulled boat ramps and docks apart. It began knocking homes aside, flipping cars over, settling in to stay. It took lives without a faint gesture of mercy. Power lines went out, traffic stalled and by nightfall the area was one big wet sponge. And the rains stayed and the river climbed. And raced along.”
Anatomy of Agnes
For four days in June 1972, the Harrisburg region — and much of Pennsylvania — felt the rains and flooding from Tropical Storm Agnes. The effects of the storm would last much longer. The late Milton Shapp, then governor, called the story “Hurricane Agony.” As he assessed the devastation, he said, “There is no getting back to normal. Pennsylvania will never be the same again.” Today, Agnes remains the flood by which all others are measured in the midstate. The Susquehanna River has never crested that high again in Harrisburg. Here’s a look at how the storm unfolded and some of the staggering amounts of damage it caused.
1 3 5 7 10 15 in inches
Flood stage for the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg is 17 feet. The record crest set during Tropical Storm Agnes still stands. Here is a look at the top 10 historic crests:
33.27 feet on June 24, 1972
(Tropical Storm Agnes)
29.23 feet on March 19, 1936
26.80 feet on June 2, 1889
25.70 feet on May 22, 1894
25.17 feet on Sept. 9, 2011
(Tropical Storm Lee)
25.08 feet on Jan. 20, 1996
24.40 feet on Sept. 19, 2004
(Remnants of Hurricane Ivan)
23.81 feet on Sept. 27, 1975
21.80 feet on May 29, 1946
21.51 feet on March 12, 1964
STAGGERING LOSS
Early in June: Above-average rainfall helps set the stage for the catastrophic flooding that will follow. From January through May, rainfall in the Harrisburg area had totaled 19.99 inches, or 4.57 inches above average. In June, there will be measurable rainfall on nearly every day through June 20.
June 11, 1972: The early origins of what would become Hurricane Agnes are first noticed in the Caribbean Sea.
June 18, 1972: The storm grows into a hurricane as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico.
June 19, 1972: Agnes makes landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in the Florida Panhandle about 8 p.m. and downgrades to a tropical storm before it exits the state. In Florida, the storm spawns tornados.
June 20, 1972: Now a tropical depression, Agnes crosses Georgia.
June 21, 1972: The midstate starts to feel the effects of the storm, which crosses the Carolinas and re-forms into a tropical storm before going out to sea off the North Carolina coast by 8 p.m.
The Patriot-News reports that 5.81 inches of rain have fallen that day in the midstate, but newspaper accounts say the area is not under any real threat.
June 22, 1972: The storm travels along the Eastern Seaboard, and The Patriot-News says the forecast for central Pennsylvania calls for occasional heavy rain, possibly ending by evening. The temperature is in the low 70s.
However, the storm makes landfall near New York City as a tropical storm and joins with another pressure system as it turns westward over New York and Pennsylvania.
The midstate receives 9.13 inches of rain that day, according to Patriot-News reports.
June 23, 1972: Agnes disintegrates over western Pennsylvania. In just two days, it dumps on the Eastern Seaboard 28.1 trillion gallons of water, nearly 13 times the capacity of Raystown Lake in Huntingdon County. Some 13,500 miles of rivers and streams overflow their banks.
The swiftness of rising waters traps many people. Boats race to evacuate residents from the second floors of their homes.
Helicopter crews, many just returned from the Vietnam War, use rescue techniques honed under fire in the jungles to pluck people from tops of flooded homes, from river islands and from isolated camps. Fire, fed by a leak of natural gas, destroys 13 dwellings and damages a half dozen others in the 2100 block of North Second Street in Harrisburg. Water is 6 feet deep in the area, and firefighters battle the inferno from rooftops and boats, pumping water directly from the street onto the blaze.
Agnes brings normal air, rail and bus service to a halt. Mail delivery stops. Electricity and telephone service are severed. Public water supplies in many communities are tainted.
Curfews are ordered in many communities, and the National Guard sets up checkpoints to keep out sightseers and prevent looting
June 24, 1972: The Susquehanna River crests around 33 feet at 10 a.m., as recorded on the Nagle Street gauge in Shipoke. That beats the previous record set March 19, 1936, by more than 3 feet.
President Richard Nixon surveys the damage and visits evacuees at William Penn High School in uptown.
June 24, 1972: Some 650 billion gallons of water gushed through Harrisburg, where the normal river volume is 23 billion gallons of water per day.
June 25, 1972: Floodwaters begin to recede and the damage can be surveyed.
Water is 5 feet deep on the first floor of the Governor’s Residence, which will be uninhabitable for months.
The Pennsylvania Lottery loses its entire reserve of 45 million tickets, computer printing equipment and paper supplies, which have been covered by 9 feet of water in a 10,000-square-foot warehouse at Harrisburg International Airport.
June 26, 1972: Three news correspondents and a pilot die in a helicopter crash at Capital City Airport. The reporters from CBS News and WCAU-TV in Philadelphia had been covering the flooding.
June 28, 1972: The Patriot-News, whose printing presses on Market Street in Harrisburg were flooded June 22, releases its first edition documenting the flood. The main headline is “Anatomy of a disaster.”
The combined edition of The Patriot and The Evening News is printed in Allentown. It is the first time in 120 years that a natural disaster has prevented normal publication of the newspaper.
The aftermath: To house homeless people, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sets up mobile home parks. The Farm Show parking lot becomes a trailer village. In time, 400 houses in the city are deemed uninhabitable and are razed. Whole neighborhoods, including sections of Shipoke and the west side of Steelton, disappear.
Widespread: 12 states were affected, particularly from flooding in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
Human toll: Reports put the death toll between 117 and 128, with nearly 50 in Pennsylvania. In New York, the state with the next highest loss, 24 people died.
Destruction: Damage totaled $3.1 billion. In Pennsylvania, at least $2.12 billion in public and private property damage. (New York was second with $702 million.)
Homes destroyed: At least 115,200 homes were destroyed overall, including more than 65,000 in Pennsylvania. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced in the state. Farm buildings destroyed: At least 2,226 farm buildings were destroyed overall, including 1,684 in Pennsylvania.
Small businesses destroyed: 5,842 small businesses were destroyed overall, including 3,000 in Pennsylvania.
Damage to roads and bridges: Damage was estimated at around $300 million in Pennsylvania. Floodwaters washed out or closed 569 bridges in Pennsylvania. Penn Central Railroad, for example, lost 48 bridges and other facilities.
Rainfall: Between June 20 and 24, most parts of central Pennsylvania received rainfall totaling 8 to 10 inches. However, a corridor including Harrisburg received 12 to 16 inches. The heaviest reported 24-hour rainfall was recorded at Harrisburg, where 12.53 inches fell between 8 p.m. June 21 and 8 p.m. June 22, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm smashed records as it saturated central Pennsylvania and remains the benchmark by which all other floods are measured.
Sue Gleiter sgleiter@pennlive.comFifty years ago, Tropical Storm Agnes drenched the Eastern Seaboard, stalling over parts of Pennsylvania.
The storm, the worst in the history of the state, left a path of destruction. Basements flooded, streets turned into canals and thousands of people headed to shelters. To this day, Agnes remains a benchmark by which all other storms are measured.
“The river climbed with utter abandon, moved rapidly into city streets,” reporter Cal Turner wrote in a story published by The Patriot-News on June 28, 1972. “It tugged at the underpins of the big bridges. It pulled boat ramps and docks apart. It began knocking homes aside, flipping cars over, settling in to stay. It took lives without a faint gesture of mercy. Power lines went out, traffic stalled and by nightfall the area was one big wet sponge. And the rains stayed and the river climbed. And raced along.”
Little did anyone know the power the storm would unleash when it formed in mid-June as a tropical disturbance over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. By June 18, Agnes grew into a tropical storm and moved toward western Cuba and the Florida Straits, eventually gaining strength as a hurricane.
It traveled north along the coast and while downgraded to an extratropical storm, Agnes unleashed widespread rain across the East Coast, even as the storm remained just below a Category 1 hurricane status with sustained winds of 70 mph and the lowest observed pressure of 977 millibars.
According to the National Weather Service, the remnants dropped 7 to 10 inches of rain, including reports of nearly 18 inches in some areas. Flooding levels in Pennsylvania surpassed previous records set from the Great Flood of 1936.
Rivers including the Susquehanna River and tributaries experienced their highest water marks on June 24. In Harrisburg, the river crested at 33.27 feet, about 16 feet above flood stage.
Nationwide, 122 deaths were attributed to Agnes and nearly 50 in Pennsylvania. Total damages reached $3 billion nationwide and about $2 billion in losses in the Susquehanna River Basin.
The Red Cross estimates nearly
