Posted on Tue, Aug. 30, 2011
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. James Cawley stood Monday along a bank of Buck County's Neshaminy Creek that just the day before had been under more than six feet of water.
"We prepared for the worst, prayed for the best, and we got somewhere in the middle," he said.
That assessment - as much as anything else - summed up the mood Monday across the Philadelphia area as rivers receded, rains gave way to blue summer skies, and business owners and residents emerged from Irene's shadow to fully gauge the mess they still had on their hands.
In some areas, the storm's presence lingered, including Easton, where the Delaware crested at a little more than 25 feet - three feet above flood stage - before beginning its slow retreat.
And authorities identified a 64-year-old East Norriton woman found dead Sunday evening along the banks of an engorged Wissahickon Creek as Southeastern Pennsylvania's first confirmed death from Irene. Whitemarsh police believe Patricia O'Neill drowned there while trying to walk to work at a nearby grocery store during the height of the storm.
(Philadelphia police also recovered the body of a 36-year-old man from the Delaware but have not said whether the death was hurricane-related.)
Still, many places - even some that had found themselves under as much as six feet of water Sunday - appeared to have bounced back. People, for instance, ate lunch at sidewalk tables along Manayunk's Main Street, while stores propped open their doors to let in an afternoon breeze. The same stretch was part of the Schuylkill just 24 hours earlier.
"We're doing quite well," proclaimed Jane Lipton, executive director of the Manayunk Development Corp. "We're dry, our stores are open, and we're back in business."
Speaking in Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter said it would take "several weeks" to calculate the storm's cost, but he maintained he would seek whatever reimbursements were available from state and federal emergency declarations.
Peco, meanwhile, worked to restore power to more than 500,000 customers who lost theirs during what the company called one of the top five outages in its history. As of Monday afternoon, 168,000 remained without service, with the majority in Bucks and Chester Counties.
A company representative said many should see service restored by Wednesday, well in advance of the 10 days workers had previously estimated.
Dozens of roads and bridges also reopened as the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and local crews cleared debris, while flight service returned to Philadelphia International Airport by late morning.
For the most part, SEPTA buses, trains, and trolleys returned to their regular schedules. But residual storm-related problems delayed the reopening of the Cynwyd, Paoli/Thorndale, and Trenton lines.
Elsewhere, insurance adjusters and government officials set to work putting a hard number on the hurricane's damage - figures that will determine in the coming days the level of state and federal aid available to the area's recovering communities.
Gov. Corbett, who spent the day touring storm-damaged areas in the northeastern part of the state, began making his case for federal aid to hasten the recovery. The Governor's Office submitted 11 counties - including Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware - for consideration for potential disaster assistance and said more could be added to the list.
"We have to get people back into their homes," Corbett said at a midafternoon news conference at a convenience store in Mehoopany, west of Scranton in rural Wyoming County.
Cawley, the lieutenant governor, spent much of the day in his home of Bucks County touring flood sites. In Yardley, he walked along River Road a hundred yards, until the Delaware stopped him. In Hulmeville, he took in the Neshaminy Creek Shore Picnic Park, a recreation center that sustained about $25,000 in damage, owner Curt Dawson said. And in New Hope, he stood on Main Street, deserted except for sightseers and dog walkers - the shops, restaurants, and other businesses closed without electricity.
In Montgomery County, the storm's impact varied. Lush green grass and cleared sidewalks along Conshohocken's stretch of Schuylkill riverfront showed little trace Monday that much of it had been under a rising tide of water only days before. A slightly boggy smell and a thin layer of silt dusting the streets were all that remained from the flooding that forced the borough to evacuate two apartment complexes.
In Whitemarsh and Collegeville, though, homeowners kept windows open and pumps running hoping to air out houses inundated with water from the Wissahickon and Perkiomen Creeks. Both reached near-record flooding levels Sunday.
The Darby Creek in Delaware County had also returned to pre-storm levels Monday - in some places less than a foot deep. Yet the cleaning process for many had only begun.
"I can't turn it off," said Mike Truong, 45, as he returned to a screeching alarm at his business - Fibber's Suds & Soda on MacDade Boulevard - on Monday.
He stood amid the muddy remains of thousands of cans of beer and soda that had floated in more than six feet hours before. Nearby, wooden pallets stacked five to 10 feet high held what he was able to save before the storm. Gawkers came by throughout the day offering to take his damaged stock of alcohol off his hands.
"I put a lot of money in here, and now it is all damaged inside," he said. "When I bought this place, they didn't say it was in a flood zone until I gave them my deposit. If I had known . . . I wouldn't have bought it."
In Manayunk, though, where river flooding drew amused onlookers out onto Main Street on Sunday to watch a parade of debris floating by in a swollen Schuylkill, Monday held no trace of the weekend's excitement.
Max Tucker, coowner of the Mad River bar at the foot of Main Street, schlepped equipment down from higher floors after city workers helped pump out the six feet of water that had flooded his basement. He said he planned to reopen Tuesday.
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