NeXt: Back on track in Gowanda after disastrous summer flood
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T he signs that are displayed as you drive down Water Street in Gowanda seem like complete nonsense now. They warn drivers to slow down so they won’t stir up the dust settled on the street, but there is not a trace of dust to be found. It has been four months since that dreadful night in mid-August, and nobody in Gowanda has bothered to remove the signs. They stand as a reminder of the week Gowanda residents spent bathing in the August heat pulling mud up from the ground by the bucketload.
On the night of Aug. 9 and the morning of Aug. 10, Gowanda was washed away as torrential downpours led to chaotic floodwaters. Now, driving through the village, it is as if none of what happened over the summer ever occurred. There are buildings missing here and there, but otherwise it doesn’t appear that the Village of Gowanda was turned into a lake over the summer.
One look at Hillis Field now would never clue a passer- by in on what the field went through in August. Heartbroken teenage athletes were left with a mud-covered track and field after the raging waters from the overflowing Thatcher Brook swept through. Talk of relocating the field to an area that is not a flood plain ensued, and the possibility that graduation for the Class of 2010 would not be held on the field seemed great. Now, many months, much hard work and around $117,000 later, the field looks as good as new. In fact, a good chunk of it is.
Once the mud was cleared away, the damage made to the track and field could be assessed properly. With the clearing of the mud came good news to the community and the athletes that play and run at Hillis Field. The entire football/lacrosse field was not in shape to be used for Gowanda’s 2009 football season, but the fear of relocating the field was gone. It was decided relocating the field would cost more than repairing it. Home football games had to be held elsewhere, and in the meantime, recovery work started on the track and field. Instead of starting anew with seed, sod was rolled, creating a new playing field in no time.
The southeast turn of the track (where the main starting line is) got the worst of the damage.
“It appears to be done,” said Gowanda Superintendent Charles Rinaldi. “They cut out the southeast corner, they put new asphalt underneath, they laid down the new artificial surface, then they went around the whole track and spot corrected.”
Here and there around the track, little bits have been redone, but an entire redo was deemed unnecessary. For the parts that have not been touched up, the only concern is what the mud remaining beneath the track’s rubbery surface and the asphalt underneath will do once winter rolls around.
“I can’t imagine that it’s going to do anything that will not allow us to run track in the spring,” said Rinaldi.
All around Gowanda, what once resembled a war zone after the flood has now bounced back and assumed its regular shape. The roads lack the dust from the dried mud and the entire village smells better than it did in that August heat.
Many of the stores on Main Street have new carpeting to replace the carpet that got soaked by dirty floodwaters. Basements that were once flooded have long since been pumped out and scrubbed, and mud-caked yards had help from moist fall weather to be nursed back to health with grass seed.
Roads in Perrysburg that made it difficult to get out of the valley have been repaired, but some remain closed due to extensive damage.
Carrie Poff’s basement is cleaned out (though it is now missing a giant pool table); her yard, though snow-covered, is now mud-free, and her pool that was turned into a muddy swamp by the flood has been cleaned out and is now waiting out the winter to again be put to use. The only remaining sign that a flood tracked through her house is the missing white fence that used to separate her backyard from a neighboring one.
“[The pool] took two days to clean out, and normally [Designer Pools of Gowanda] said it only takes one,” said the Gowanda High School junior. “I don’t know how much it cost, but insurance didn’t cover it.”
The easy way to escape the muck-filled pool could have been to just fill it in and forget that a pool was ever there.
“My dad joked around about it but never really considered it,” said Carrie.
One thing that residents in Gowanda will never forget is the awful smell after the flood. The murky water left behind buckets of mud that contained fecal matter; two ingredients that proved to create a pungent odor when combined.
When asked if she could still smell that awful odor, Chelsea Young said, “Yeah, I can –and that’s how it will be forever whenever I look back on The Flood.”
Chelsea, a senior at Gowanda, was among a group of teenagers that called themselves the “Valley Brigade” and helped as much as possible with the cleanup effort.
“Not only can I smell it, I can still feel it on my skin,” she added.
On the first day back to school for Gowanda, it was obvious that a majority of the students had gone through something over the summer that they won’t soon forget. To help people remember, Chelsea’s younger sister, Courtney, a freshman at Gowanda, made a video to show at a schoolwide assembly
>> on that first day back. The video can be viewed by typing “Gowanda by Courtney Young” on YouTube or go to
http:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=b7Vg3PeCw7U. Featured in the video are all of the horrors of the flood, including some photos of the Poffs’ pool after the flood.
“She said she made it so people will remember it forever,” said Chelsea. “It’s something no one should forget.”
Gowanda is back on track both figuratively and literally. The track team is talking of hosting an invitational at the facility this spring to raise funds for flood victims.
“I think it’s great for two reasons,” said Rinaldi. “From the beginning, the board wanted to create a playing field and a track that had the eight lanes so that it could host regional meets. It would also be a nice measure of the rejuvenation of the field and an even larger measure of the community.”
Life is back to normal for Gowanda residents. No longer is the air clouded with dust and the smell of mud. Instead, cleansing Gowanda is the freshly fallen snow and Christmas spirit.
Emily Steves is a junior at Gowanda High School.
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