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Memories of disaster flooding back 30 years later

Now adults, the children of the Shadyside flood share their stories

By SHELLEY HANSON

Times Leader Staff Writer

SHADYSIDE — For those who survived the Wegee and Pipe creeks disaster, the horrific event left an indelible mark on their memories and lives — and this includes the children, teenagers and young adults who endured the catastrophe as well.

Following are the memories shared by several of those brave, young people from that night and the days that followed.

James Johnson was 19 years old at the time of the flood. Johnson and four of his friends — Nick Weber, Mike Palicka, Courtney Moore Back and Joni Thatcher — were on their way to the 3Ks bar in Shadyside when their vehicle was hit by the raging water.

“Our car was swept away and bounced off of trees like a pinball before coming to rest sideways against a tree. Either Nick or Mike was able to kick the back window out of the car and one by one we climbed into the tree that held the car,” Johnson said.

“Looking back, it’s a miracle that tree held our weight as long as it did. The branch Courtney was on broke and she bounced off the trunk of the car into the water. Somehow Mike and Nick saw her fingers sticking out of the water in a flash of the lightning and grabbed her. We later found she had broken her neck when she hit the trunk.

“Upon hearing our screams a guy, our savior, who lives nearby tied a rope to the tongue of his trailer and threw it to us. It was tied off to the tree and the five of us were brought to safety. We were then taken to a house (the McCabes) at the top of Wegee to seek medical treatment for Courtney.

“It is a night none of us will ever forget. To say we were lucky is an understatement.

“Five years ago my wife and I took a ride to see if I could find the tree that we climbed that night. While I was out looking, a gentleman (John Feher) came out of a house across the road. As I was telling him the story he said he remembered, and that he was the man that saved us.”

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Shadyside resident Dave Crippen was 21 years old when the flood happened. He was delivering pizzas when the storm hit.

“There was so much water in the streets of Bellaire that my car was picked up by the water and moved while I was in it,” he said.

“I had to come home to Shadyside to clean it when my dad, who is a scanner junkie, told me of what was occurring out Wegee crick. One of my younger brothers was hanging out at the crick that evening at the 3K’s parking lot with a bunch of other people when he saw the first fire trucks go flying out the crick, so he decided to follow them.

“It’s a good thing he did because soon they were all turned around from the wall of water. The people that stayed in the lot at the 3K’s bar eventually ended up in the flood and hanging on to trees and telephone poles for dear life. This is when we lost Scott Balsei. He was one of the kids in the lot that remained.”

Balsei was 19 years old at the time of his death.

“Overnight our little peaceful town was turned into a military camp it seemed.

“When we woke the next morning, we learned of the devastation that occurred; it was like a nightmare. I remember the schools being turned into places to receive donations,” Crippen noted.

Crippen also remembers that one of his college friends, Brian Smith, and his friend’s mother could not reach him by phone after learning of the disaster on national TV. Since they were concerned with his safety, they drove to Shadyside to find him.

“Him and his mother made the decision to drive to Shadyside from the Washington, D.C., area with a car full of clothes and shovels and food to help me and my family just because he couldn’t get a hold of me. We weren’t in the flood’s path, we live in another part of town. He and his mother just assumed the worst because he could not get through on the telephone line. This gesture I will never forget.

Shannan Rodgers Hildebrand was just 5 years old when the disaster happened. She was at a dance recital at the Burkhart Dance Center.

“It rained nonstop. The lightning was intense. It lit up the sky like daylight at some points. My dad, Gary Rodgers, ended up leaving the recital early. He had an uneasy feeling. He said somewhere was getting flooded. Little did we know, he was right,” Hildebrand said.

“My grandfather owns property across from the (flood memorial) monument. That morning my dad went to check on the property and backhoe. When he got there it looked like a bomb went off.

“I remember when he came home, he described everything to my mom. He got across the creek — I can’t remember how. The water had receded somewhat by then. I believe. He got to the backhoe and started moving debris and cars to aid in the rescue efforts. Unfortunately he was the one to find the first bodies.

“He found an older gentleman and the young boy, who was a year or so older than me. The boy was clung to the tree, if I recall. He retrieved them, found what he could to give them dignity, wrapped their bodies, and put them into the bucket of the backhoe and brought them to the proper authorities.”

She also remembers people were trying to loot. To help stop looters, Hildebrand said her father, along with some members of the Sentinels motorcycle club, were “deputized” to watch over the National Guard’s equipment.

“I was left with my grandmother, so my mom could help with the disaster relief at Jefferson (Elementary School), too. My dad’s picture is actually in TIME magazine. They were taking pictures of him in the flood waters looking for any survivors,” she said.

Hildebrand also remembers everyone coming together for the one-year anniversary of the disaster.

“We came together as a town and stood at the side of the creek. We sang hymns, heard speakers from families of those perished, and we cried. It was a time I will never forget. I still remember the devastation. Everything was flattened.

“I played in that creek all the time. It was unrecognizable after that. I remember the news stations covering it. The debris going all the way to the dam, where I believe they found another body. I may have been young, but I do remember a lot. Especially my dad coming home and breaking down in tears every night, because of the scenes he endured,” she said.

Hildebrand said her father is now a village councilman in Shadyside. Her mother, Robin Rodgers, passed away after battling cancer.

Jodi Connor was 9 years old when the flood hit. She had just stayed a week at her grandparents home along Wegee Creek, and was hoping to stay longer.

“I had stayed with my grandparents, Jake and Shirley Monroe, the week before the flood happened for vacation bible school at their church. I remember begging my grandparents to let me stay another week with them. They of course had said no,” Connor said.

“I lived in Barnesville at that time. I remember waking up to my mom on the phone with someone and her crying and thanking God that my grandparents, my aunt and two cousins, and my great uncle were alive and OK.

“I asked her what happened and she said grandma and pap’s house along with my uncle and great uncle’s houses were in a flood. But they were OK. We got in the car and headed to their house. They lived on Weegee Crick. I had never seen my mother so shaken up.”

Connor said when they finally arrived at her grandparents house they saw they had lost everything to the flood.

“The house I had stayed in just a week prior was now sitting with mud all through it. You could see where the water had come up to. My uncle’s home was moved off of the confer blocks and was now sideways,” she said. “My grandparent’s neighbor’s home that was across the road was gone.

“I remember how hot it was outside. And the smell of the dirty water and mud. I later learned that when the water had started coming up under their front door my pap went out and tried to get to his dog that was tied up across the road by the crick, but the water was moving too fast.

“He came back inside and told my grandma to grab their inside dog and her purse and get over to my great uncle’s house next door. My grandma crawled along the hillside over to my great uncle’s house. Once she was there my pap went back out and got my aunt and two cousins out and over to the house.

Her grandfather also went and helped his neighbors from a tree they were forced to climb up.

“Over the course of the night my pap saved 14 people,” Connor added.

She noted her grandparents were able to rebuild their home and they also donated some of the brick used for the Wegee Creek memorial.

“He passed away in 2002 from lung cancer. He was a Vietnam veteran, too. For the rest of my life, I’ll always remember how brave and selfless my pap was. I’ll always remember how my grandma’s faith in God got her through one of the most terrifying events in her life,” she said.

Shadyside native Josh Kent was 16 when the flood occurred. He lived in town and his childhood home was not impacted, so his parents allowed him to volunteer to help those who were hit.

“It was within one or two weeks of the event and there was a lot of debris in the creeks and random things from people’s homes. It was a sunny day and my parents must have dropped us off at the site where we waited with some other guys for a work truck,” Kent said.

“A red pick up came along and we all got in the bed and rode up and down some stretch of the creek. We were told to yell out if we saw anything. Later that morning, I realized that ‘anything’ meant a body,” he said.

Kent said the landscape was full of mud, broken trees and people’s belongings.

“I specifically remember seeing a gold table lamp with its lampshade dripping with gray mud trapped in a snarl of tree branches. We got dropped off at a woman’s home. I can’t remember the location now. Her entire basement and part of her first floor had been flooded. The basement was a family room. She’d had an electric organ, TV, couch, a half-bathroom. It must have been so cozy,” Kent said.

“It was completely destroyed now, covered in smelly, dark mud. We waded in up to our waists with shovels and buckets and started bailing it out. At one point the woman yelled down to us, ‘If you find my husband’s false teeth, don’t throw them out!’ We all smiled and laughed a little, but she was serious.

“We did decent work for only three of four guys and by the mid-afternoon we could see the couch, the electric organ with all its colorful little switches, even the patterned carpet was showing. We didn’t find the teeth. When we left, the woman was extremely grateful.

“She thanked us over and over and tried to give us money and sandwiches. We refused the money, but we did take the sandwiches. We rode back in silence with our shirts off. Eating sandwiches and drinking warm Gator-Aid in silence.

“To this day I have no idea who those other guys on the crew were. I don’t even know who was driving the truck. We all worked really hard together to help that lady, that’s all I really know.”

Jay Littleton was 10 years old at the time of the disaster. He remembers that it was his mother’s 45th birthday.

“I lived on Wegee, right at the bottom of Webb heights (Cherry Forest). … My mom (Tootie) and my dad (Iggy) we’re sitting on the front porch enjoying the early evening rain, my brother Jim and I were in the living room watching TV (LA Law, I believe). We never lost power because our power lines come down the hill, but we did lose water because of the flood,” Littleton said.

“The wind started to blow so my parents came inside to get away from the rain coming onto the porch and decided to move their chairs into the basement garage to still be able to sit and drink and watch the rain.

“My other brother Jon called from town and said he couldn’t make it out the road to say happy birthday because there was water over the road towards town. That’s when we looked outside and could see the water rising rapidly. My brother ran out to the driveway to pull his car into the garage since our house is on a slight incline.

“Then he ran out and waded through the water behind the house and saved our small beagle puppy Jude who was on top of her dog box. By the time he got back in, we all went to the front porch and the water was at its highest. We have three steps coming up to our front porch and the water was on the second step. It never made it up to the porch, and was going so fast it never had a chance to turn and go into the basement garage door.

“We could only see what was going on whenever the lightning would flash. There were two trailers across the street from our house. One with the Nelson family (luckily they weren’t home, they were in Wheeling at something for their daughter if I remember correctly). The other trailer was where the Gatten family lived (Mary and her two younger sons Stephen and Timmy).

“One flash of the lightning the trailer was there, the next it was across the road, the last flash it was down the road a bit past where T&L auto body is. I still think I heard the metal scraping across the road when it was being dragged by the water, my mom says that she thinks it was screaming.

“Either way, it’s one of the worst memories I’ve ever experienced in my life. The next morning when the sun came up, we saw the drastic changes that took place around us. The Nelson’s trailer was moved off its foundation and pinned against a tree in their front yard, a total loss. We believe by their trailer getting pinned at an angle it diverted the force of the water away from our house, unfortunately that moved the water directly at the Gatten’s trailer.

“We walked down to their trailer down the road, and saw their car pinned against the side; the car keys were in the door hanging there. So, either she left them there accidentally earlier in the day, or they were trying to escape the flood and got caught during the worst of it. Stephen was 8 and Timmy was 6, so they weren’t much younger than myself at the time.

Littleton said losing his friends at such a young age was “horrible.”

“Still to this day when it’s a bad storm at night I don’t really like the way the sky looks, and I’m 40 years old now. I have two kids now, ages 9 and almost 11, and they are now starting to ask about ‘the huge flood of 1990.’ I’ve chosen to leave out some of the graphic details when I tell them about it, but they are just amazed that the little creek by grandma’s house could have done all of that,” he said.

Angela Wiles was 12 years old when the flood happened. She remembers enjoying swimming and fishing in the creek that same hot and humid day before the weather turned.

“We spent a lot of time at the creek. When the clouds rolled in my mother got very spooked because she always had a fear of flooding, so we packed up the car and headed home. When we pulled out the heavens opened up, spilling the most horrible rainfall I had ever experienced,” Wiles said.

“It was as if God himself opened the dams in heaven and let the water flow. When we made it to my grandparents’ house in Shadyside, her yard had about 3 feet of water in it. We thought it was great until she came outside screaming that houses, cars and people were being swept away on Wegee.”

Wiles said her mother decided to drive to check on a friend’s parents on Wegee Road.

“When we stood there looking at the water I will never forget the sight and sound of the water. It was as if the Ohio River was running through our little creek and the road and everything in between was gone,” she said.

“Our friends were safe, thank goodness, but I knew in my young heart and soul that many other people wouldn’t be as fortunate. I lost a classmate that night: Kerri Polivka amongst many other deaths as well.

“It’s been 30 years since that dreadful night, but still now when the skies cloud up and get very dark I feel a shiver in my soul. I will never forget the sound of the water that night. A sound that fills my ears with dread. My family were firefighters so we were all involved in clean up and doing whatever we could to help. I am now 42 years old, but to this day I will never forget the sights and sounds of that night.”

Laura Ramsay was a middle schooler when the flood ravaged the Wegee and Pipe Creek areas. She remembers being at swim practice during the day and learning the news from her grandmother the next morning.

“Being a child going to seventh grade at the time and losing numerous friends it was very sad, but I will say one thing it changed a lot of us on how we looked at life and how to be overcomers and how to deal with grief in general,” she said.

Ramsay said she remembers calling her mom from her grandma’s house, scared and sad about what happened.

“I remember sitting in the car as the National Guard let my mom through, getting me from my grandma’s, seeing trailers upon trailers wedged in Wegee and police fire and rescue lining the loop. It was scary, but at the same time I remember asking my mom a ton of questions. It really was surreal,” Ramsay said.

Ramsay believes the children who survived and endured the disaster do not take life for granted. They also learned about coming together as a community and helping each other from the event.

“But most importantly us kids of the 90s, we never forget that day. We always call friends we miss and also rightfully respect those we lost. … And we’ll forever be grateful for the many heroes that night and the days that came and passed. My thoughts and prayers to my class of 1996: I know we all had our struggles but we always have had each other. And RIP to our dear friend (Kerri Polivka) who saved a life in exchange for hers — you are dancing with the angels,” she said.

Paul Carpenter was 12 years old at the time of the disaster. He was supposed to stay the night at his friend’s house on Cash Hill Road, but his hay fever allergies forced him to go home.

“We were stopped by the fire department before going to Weegee and told there was a car in the creek so we had to go a different way. I remember us waking up and seeing the news of what happened,” Carpenter said.

“I remember them saying that a wall of water came down the creek and took everything in its path. I remember them saying that people had died and were missing, including my classmate Kerri (Polivka). I still remember seeing her parents on the news dealing with uncertainty.

“Even as a kid I knew how terrible things were, but it never hit me until I was with my dad, who was helping with the cleanup. I saw where there would be a garage and car sitting in perfect condition next to a foundation of a missing house 10 feet away.

“There were houses in the road, trees everywhere and just a terrible feeling of sadness and confusion everywhere even though it was days after. It looked like a tornado went through.”

Carpenter said he also remembers the Salvation Army, Red Cross and National Guard setting up camp to help. Everyone in the community stopped what they were doing to help with the cleanup, too.

“There’s still one silo left from the Fernwood Dairy. The ladder on it is bent from the flood. When I ride by there I still think about what happened,” Carpenter said. “Thinking about it now, I think people should appreciate everything they have because you never know when it all can be taken away.”

Chad Esposito was 18 years old when the wall of water happened. He remembers how forceful the water was. A turn on the creek made the water smash into the 3K’s bar, he said.

“It ripped a wall out and the water went in and people got sucked out of the bar,” he said.

Esposito lived in the trailer court, but since his home was located on a higher grade, it did not take on any water. His good fortune allowed him to volunteer to help others. He helped the National Guard and his fellow village residents with the search and rescue efforts.

He is even in a photo synonymous with disaster. In it he is standing in the creek holding a chain connected to a vehicle.

“There was a truck stuck under the bridge in the creek,” he said.

Esposito said he had just come back from a senior trip to Myrtle Beach when the disaster occurred.

“When I came home I was at the mall. It was raining so hard the roof started leaking in the mall. When I drove home there was gravel and debris all over the road. My mom woke me up in the morning and told me Wegee Creek flooded,” he said.

“She said it was real bad and they were looking for people, searching for people. … I was down there the first day. We got organized and met at the elementary school. They brought us in and gave us tetanus shots. They put on school buses and we went up Pipe Creek or Wegee. Budweiser gave us white cans that said ‘water’ in black. Basically we walked and searched through debris for people missing for seven days,” he said.

Esposito noted he was glad he did not have to discover any bodies, but there were carcases of farm animals mixed in with the debris.

“Luckily I did not come across anybody. … One of my friends, Scott Balsie, was in the 3K when the water came in. He was sucked out and died. He was the last one found at the mouth of the crick in the river,” he said.

Esposito remembers sitting on the lawn of Leona Middle School with the other volunteers, many of whom were fellow football players. A reporter with USA Today interviewed the group about their work together as a team was helpful during the crisis, he said.

“It was the first year we made the playoffs,” he noted.

Esposito said at the time there was not much time to sit and think about what they were doing, about what had happened.

“It was just something we did. … I remember DeFelice Pizza was a big thing in town. They delivered pizza down to us the first day. They brought pizza to the searchers and first responders. I remember going to the fire department and they had food in there for us,” he said.

Esposito said he also helped people try to salvage their belongings from the wreckage. He noted the disaster was so unbelievable “it started off like a dream.”

“There was a 40-foot wall of water that hit the 3K. The guy who owned it, Curley Gibbons, had some cars stuck in trees. … I used to swim in that creek.”

Esposito said at the time there was much speculation about the flood’s strength. Some believed that old mine shafts filled with water and burst, while others believed an old junk yard damned up water and burst, too.

Though it was 30 years ago, the flood had an impact on the way Esposito thinks about water.

“Living in the Ohio Valley we see water here every day. We don’t think about how the water goes down the tributaries and dumps into the Ohio River. … I try to convey to my daughter, don’t drive through water when it’s raining. You can see what it did to lift houses and cars. You don’t understand the power of water until something like this happens. I gained more respect about what nature can do,” he said.

Esposito has two daughters, Haley, a college freshman, and Sidney, a middle schooler.

Jaime Helms Siburt said her best friend, the late Kerri Polivka, was going to stay the night at her house. But Kerri had already signed up for babysitting duty elsewhere.

“I was the last person to talk to her. She called me to ask how to cook bacon in the microwave. It was storming like crazy. I told her she better wait and the phone went dead. I woke up the next morning to find out she had died,” Siburt said.

“She put the girl she was babysitting in the tub when the water rushed in. If she had stayed with me that night she would be alive today. I miss her so much and think about her every day. I’m always wondering what we would be doing today. I will never forget that night.”

Shadyside native Travis Jarrett was 13 years old during the disaster. He remembers that night being rainy, but did not know of the extent of the devastation across town until his mother called him from work the next morning.

“She asked me if I had heard what had happened. … She was describing a huge wall of water. It was so crazy that I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” Jarrett said.

Jarrett said up until that time he never in his life had been exposed to such disaster and tragedy in his hometown. At his own home he had only had backups in his basement drain.

“When I was going out on my bike that day at the basketball court is where most if not all of the news trucks were parked. It was like a huge campsite. They had huge satellite dishes. That put it into perspective that this was a huge deal,” he said. “Our town was literally turned upside down in one day. … Houses were gone and swept away.”

Jarrett said he remembers his father going out to get photographs of the damage before the area was blocked off from the public by the National Guard.

He also remembers people talking about the one of the flood’s youngest victims being searched for. Though he was not close friends with her, he remembers just days before walking by her home and talking to her.

“Police were using search dogs and canvassing other areas as well. It really struck a nerve with me. I had never been exposed to anything of that level prior. I believe her body was swept into the river. That also put it into perspective. I didn’t realize how big this was, that someone you know was affected and lost their life. It was hard to come to terms with that for a while,” he said.

Jarrett said he remembers even a year after the disaster when it would rain he would wonder if the wall of water would happen again.

“You can’t stop a force of nature like that. As an adult, as a parent, it makes you more sensitive to it, I think. What if my family lived down there? Thirty years later I have an appreciation of how fortunate my family is to have never faced anything like that. You value life and realize at a moment’s notice without any warning your life can be turned upside down,” he said.

Casey Junkins also was 12 years old during the disaster. He had just lost his father to cancer the November before. He and his mother lived along Ohio 149 and McMahon Creek near Bellaire.

“It was not uncommon for us to get a little bit of water in our basement when there would be heavy rain. However, on the night when all this happened, I don’t remember mom or me being particularly concerned,” Junkins said.

“It didn’t seem like it was raining all that hard. At some point, we turned the TV off and were just sitting there talking before it was time to go to bed. Obviously, this was before the internet or anything. We didn’t have the radio on either. At some point, the old-fashioned landline telephone rang. I can’t remember if I answered it or mom did.

“However, it was my grandfather (mom’s dad). I, of course, didn’t hear my grandfather’s end of the conversation, but I could tell that mom quickly became concerned. When she hung up the phone, she said, ‘Granddaddy said there is big water coming. Get your shoes on. We’ve got to get out of here.’ So, I ran and got my shoes on and we got ready to head out.

“As soon as we got in the car and mom started to drive out of our driveway toward the road, the creek was already out of its banks. It was already level with the road. We saw this as soon as the headlights hit the road. Mom was understandably scared.

“She didn’t know how to swim and had always been afraid of even going into the shallow end of a swimming pool. I can’t remember being all that scared myself, probably because, even though I couldn’t swim very well at the time, I knew I could run up onto the hillside if I had to.

“At the time, I was only 12 and had just lost my dad to cancer about seven months before this. I didn’t realize that by this time, my dear mom was already suffering from metastatic breast cancer. In other words, her health was already deteriorating. It would have been very difficult for her to climb up on the hill to get away from the water.”

Junkins said they took off in their car in an effort to reach his grandparents’ home in Glencoe. However, instead they stopped in Stewartsville and stayed at his uncle Terry Junkin’s house because his mother was concerned about getting stuck in flood water halfway there.

“I remember not knowing if my house would be gone from the water that was clearly getting out of control. We got up the next day and had no idea what we would find when we went back down to our house. I literally remember as we drove back down the road, not wanting to look as we made the turn to where we could see what would be left of our house. Fortunately, it was still there,” Junkins said.

“The first thing I remember seeing other than our house was the massive amount of mud that covered our yard, on both sides of the road. We could clearly see where the creek had been running around our house. When we got into the house, we were glad to see there was no damage inside to the main floor.

“However, we knew there would be problems in the basement. When I opened the door to the basement, I could only get four or five steps down before entering the water. That means the water was probably about 4 or 5 feet deep.”

Junkins said the fire department helped pump out the water later, and another uncle, Dick Hubbard, helped clean out the basement full of mud.

“It was quite the task for all of us. As I recall, our furnace just needed to be cleaned and may have needed a new part. However, our hot water heater was broken beyond repair. Also, the foundation of our house sustained structural damage. However, Mom didn’t have flood insurance, so we were stuck. Banks also turned her down for a small loan to pay for repairs. I mean, I guess I see why, but it still stinks. Fortunately, we got someone to donate us a new hot water heater,” he said.

“For the rest of that summer of 1990, I remember having to deal with the mud every time I had to cut grass.

“Unfortunately, the damage to our house likely placed an even heavier burden on my poor mom. I mean, the poor lady had just watched cancer destroy her husband the previous year; she was now starting to lose her own battle against cancer; she is worried about what is going to become of me; and now this.”

Junkins said 1990 was the final summer he spent in his childhood home. His mother became very ill with the cancer. She went to a nursing home, then to the hospital before dying on April 26, 1991.

“When I look back on that 1990 flood, I remember how much it just compounded mom’s already difficult struggle. On the other hand, I also remember how cool my life was back then. I was so fortunate to have such good parents who did everything they could for me for as long as they could. We all had so much fun. The only shame is that it didn’t last longer,” Junkins said.

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Jonathan Lenz was 11 years old when the flood happened. He remembers his father, a member of the Shadyside Volunteer Fire Department, responding to the disaster.

“I remember listening for him on the police/fire scanner and being almost unable to process the radio traffic I was hearing, talk of pulling people off roofs, etc. Dad practically lived at the station in the days and weeks that followed,” Lenz said.

“I remember him telling the story a day or so after the flood walking into an office in the Shadyside fire station with my uncle (now Shadyside Fire Chief) Dave Lenz to find the governor of Ohio who asked them what they needed.

“A day or so later I stood at the bottom of west 48th Street and watched what seemed like an endless convoy of military vehicles from the Ohio National Guard roll down Central Avenue to set up essentially a military base on the south end of town.

“The military guys were in town all summer, they hung out at the Shadyside pool in their off time and me being 11 thought the soldiers were very cool.”

Lenz, who lived behind Jefferson Elementary School, remembers seeing the school principal, John Crunelle, opening up the building the night of the flood. The Red Cross set up its headquarters there to organize volunteers.

“I went down pretty regularly to volunteer,” he added. “It was surreal seeing Shadyside thrust into the national spotlight; the town was overrun with media, national news broadcast vans lined Jefferson Avenue.”

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