COMMISSION ON ORGANIZATION OF THE EXECUTIVE (Water Resources and Power Report) THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1955 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND POWER Mount Pocono, Pa. The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 9:15 a. m., at Pocono Manor, Mt. Pocono, Pa., Hon. Robert E. Jones, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Present: Congressmen Jones and Lipscomb. Also present: William C. Wise, staff director, and William L. Sturdevant, Jr., staff member. Mr. JONES. Mr. Sterling; are you Mr. Sterling? Mr. STERLING. Yes; I am. Mr. JONES. Good to have you, Mr. Sterling. Just have that seat and you may proceed. Mr. STERLING. Thank you. STATEMENT OF BURGESS STERLING, MOOSIC, PA. Mr. STERLING. I come from a small community of 400 people. Mr. JONES. Whom do you represent? Mr. STERLING. I am the Burgess of Moosic, Pa. Mr. JONES. It is M-o-o-s-i-c? Mr. STERLING. Yes; it is a little town, 400 people. We got an awful bump; all our bridges were washed out. We lost five homes completely. We had 40 to 60 damaged. There was holes in the street. The engineers did a wonderful job. There is just one thing I would like to call to the attention of this committee. We come from a mining community Mr. JONES. Speak up a little louder, please, Mr. Sterling. Mr. STERLING. I can't talk very loud; I got a squeaky voice. And along the banks of our town is mountains and mountains of this here culm, and mountains and mountains of this here slate, and every time it rains, this here, if you notice, washes into the stream and fills up the channels. Now, on August the 12th, we had a real heavy rain-that was a week before the flood-and I think that this was a big contributing factor to filling up the channels. Now, the Army enginers, of course, have cleaned the channel, but they haven't deepened it enough. Now, the next heavy rain, understand, will wash this mountain of culm and slate back into the bed of the stream. The result is there will be no channel. Now, this here, you understand, nothing can grow in it; you can't plant trees in it and something should be done, understand, to give us deeper channels, otherwise we are going to have the same thing. Now these four bridges that were destroyed total at least a halfmillion dollars. Mr. JONES. Have a seat. Mr. STERLING. Yes; none of them are over 10 years old. We had this same thing in 1942. Now, we can't plant trees into those mountains because nothing will grow. Mr. JONES. And you say that you are the Burgess of the town of Moosic? Mr. STERLING. That is right. Mr. JONES. And that you had damage to six homes? Mr. STERLING. We lost completely 5 homes, and there were 40 to 60 homes seriously damaged. Mr. JONES. Fine. You have been most helpful to us, Mr. Sterling. Do you have any questions? Mr. LIPSCOMB. No, sir. Mr. STERLING. No questions? Well, that is about all I have, gentlemen. We will appreciate anything you can do for us. Mr. JONES. Thank you very much. What watershed is the town of Moosic in? Mr. WISE. Susquehanna. It is very close to the airport we came in on. Mr. JONES. Now, our next witness is Mr. Van D. Yetter. Mr. Yetter, how are you today? Mr. YETTER. Fine. Mr. JONES. Will you hand one copy to the reporter, please? Mr. YETTER. That is all I have. STATEMENT OF HON. VAN D. YETTER, STATE ASSEMBLYMAN, MONROE COUNTY, PA. Mr. YETTER. I am Van D. Yetter, State representative from Monroe County. Mr. Chairman and Congressman Lipscomb, although I am a State legislator, I appear before this subcommittee today as a private citizen of the State of Pennsylvania and of the county of Monroe. Before I begin my brief comments, I would like to thank this committee on behalf of the people of Monroe County and of the Stroudsburgs for the opportunity you have given me to appear. During yesterday's hearing you were told of the great damage done to several areas of the Commonwealth by the August 18-19 flood. This damage was unbelievably great; in many cases it was appalling. The property damage done in this State alone would be sufficient argu ment for a sound, permanent, federally sponsored program of flood control. Flood control, as we all know, is a basic and judicious investment in all communities located along or near great waterways or in the basins below watershed areas. Once the rivers and streams are adequately controlled, the probability of immense property damage is greatly minimized. Flood control pays off in the end. The citizens of Monroe County have also suffered great damage to their private and public property. If you have been around here, you can see that. These damages have not as yet been completely and finally estimated. A preliminary report shows that such damages may well exceed $20 million. That is a very conservative figure. Our private industries were badly hit by the flood. In the week immediately following the disaster, the unemployed total in Monroe County was estimated at 8,500 or more. Now, a month and 5 days after the flood hit our county, industry is beginning to pull itself up by its bootstraps. Slowly and gradually, our men and women are going back to work. But the tremendous economic upheaval felt within our community has left a scar on the economy which will be felt for years to come. These scars are not easily removed. They take time and guts and hard work. These are the physical and psychological factors that the citizens of Monroe County are giving in this emergency. You will forgive them, I am sure, if they wonder now and then why something has not or cannot be done to prevent a recurrence of such floods. As you know, this area is part of the Pocono Mountains, a region famed the Nation over for its beautiful resort hotels and inns. This industry, which is an important and indivisible part of our economy not only in the county of Monroe but in the State of Pennsylvania, has suffered untold, harsh hardship as a result of the flood. Only a few of the resorts were actually touched by the waters. But, as has been the case in the other elements I shall mention in a moment, the loss of communication, of transportation and time has been a terrible consequence. One of the greatest areas in which this county has been hit by the flood is the area of transportation. As a direct result of the August 18 flood, 40 bridges were totally destroyed in our county alone. I have a lot of pictures here if you are interested in seeing them. Some of these bridges served as crossing points for major highway routes such as Route 611-a United States route which carries enormous quantities of marketable products through this area of the State from all parts of northeastern America. Many of the bridges lost were irreplaceable for many days; some of them will not be rebuilt for months, in permanent form. All have been temporary bridges. Highways, too, were torn up and destroyed by the floodwaters. Among these important routes were Route 209, Route 90, Route 290, Route 611, and Route 402. Traffic along these routes has been curtailed. With the immediate action of our State Highway Department and the cooperation of the Corps of Engineers, traffic on most major routes is now running with some degree of normalcy. I do not need to remind the subcommittee, I know, that one of our Nation's most important defense bases is located in this immediate area. This is the $33 million Signal Corps maintenance and supply depot at Tobyhanna. This depot, which is the largest of its kind in the world, now supplies most of the major needs of Signal Corps operations in the eastern portion of the country. In its activity, the depot is dependent upon two major traffic outlets-Route 611 and the railroad which serves this region. Mr. JONES. What railroad is that? Mr. YETTER. Delaware & Lackawanna. It is the main line from New York to Buffalo, and goes through there. Both these outlets were closed off following the recent flood. It may be argued that, at this specific time, there was no pressing or great need for outside transportation into or out of the depot. But what is to prevent such a disaster as this from occurring in a time of war or in a state of nationwide need and emergency when items held in stock at the depot are of vital importance to the national interest? I submit, Mr. Chairman, that there is nothing to prevent such a recurrence, except a solid, planned, permanent flood-control system. Such a system is of great national interest and importance in many areas. When it is applied to a situation such as this, it becomes even more important not only to this specific area but to the welfare of the Government and of the national welfare. All of these things are good, basic arguments for flood control. They are sound arguments for Federal participation in a thorough activation of waterflow controls and the planned systems to reduce flood stages. But there is one other thing which, regrettably, I find lacking in previous testimony before this subcommittee. We have heard numerous mentions of damages to private property to Bucks County industry and residences, to other areas. Much of the time these references have been statistical-and nothing is so dry as paper statistic. Nothing is so fleeting nor so subject to change. One fact has become apparent to us in Monroe County as the days passed by after the flood. That fact has been the terrible loss of life. We do not measure a life in terms of dollars and cents, Mr. Chairman. I am sure we will all agree on that point. One human life, in my mind, is worth the greatest industry in the world. Because we have become so advanced in our thinking, so cold and hard in our statistics, we often tend to think of a human life only in terms of the insurance policy which covers it. But life is the one thing we cannot replace. And for very good reason-we do not have the power. In Monroe County, the death toll now stands at 67 known dead. There are still others missing. It seems evident now that 75 persons lost their lives here. I wish it were possible for me to re-create for you in words the story of what happened here on the night of the flood. Unfortunately, there is not enough time for this, and time is of importance to us now. If I may, Mr. Chairman, I should like to trace for you, briefly, the tracks of the flood as it moved through Monroe County. August 18 was a day of endless rainfall here. In the mountain regions, at the upper level of our county, it rained 11 inches in one 24-hour period. The result, of course, was that all streams in the county were swollen to their banks and overflowing. A previous hard rainstorm, from the tail end of Hurricane Connie the week before, had soaked the ground to its saturation point. The water was forced into the streams and shallow creekbeds. On my own property, which lies in the lower end of the county, at Marshalls Creek, the stream grew high, but did not do any damage, just by a streak of luck. There was a good reason for this. Only 2 days before the rain hit this area, a dam at the headwater of the stream had been rebuilt. The gates had been closed the night before the rain came. The dam served, on the night of the flood, as an 'impounding dam, which is good proof it did a really swell job. It kept the water level down and prevented untold thousands of dollars of damages. It may have saved many lives. Along the banks of the Brodheads Creek, we were not so fortunate. There were no dams. The Brodheads had been, for years, a calm and peaceful stream. When the raging water from the foothills came down into the stream, it was turned into a killer. The three major areas of destruction along the creek were Canadensis, Analomink, and the Stroudsburgs. These were the three sites at which the 67 or 75 lives were lost. First the waters hit Canadensis. There, eight persons who had climbed to a roof to escape the flood were swept away. Their bodies were discovered as the days went bysome of them the following day; others hours later. Analomink lies below Canadensis. It is a small, secluded village. Across the Brodheads from the town lies the site of Camp Davis. There is nothing left of it now. It has been wiped from the face of the earth forever-along with dozens of houses, garages, business places in this entire area. In that small camp at the time of the flood were 42 persons, most of them mothers and their children. It was a religious camp. When the water began to come through the camp, spilling into the cabins. and shaking them from their foundations, the women and children fled to a larger house on higher ground. When the water rushed through the ground floor of the house, they fled to the second floor. Then, finally, in a last burst of desperation, they escaped to the attic. But the "escape" was short lived. A few minutes later, the house itself began to crumble and fell around them. It is unbelievable; nobody can realize the force and terrific destruction of a flood like this unless you actually see it. They had stayed in the house, singing hymns and praying. Now the group was no longer together. The flood hurled them separately against the logs and debris swept downstream by the Broadheads. Nine of them survived. One of these was a 17-year-old girl from Jersey City who had been training to be a nurse. Another was a 7-year-old girl whose family was killed in the disaster. Both the girls were saved because the height of the water swept them into the top branches of a group of trees. They clung to the trees all night. The next day, when they were brought down to safety, the older girl's hand required immediate surgical attention. Two of her fingers had been severely wounded. The doctors wanted to remove the fingers, but she would not let them, and they think they are going to come along all right. They tell us that she still gets awake in the middle of the night and yells, and it is a terrific experience. Yet, when the disaster was over, when she knew that her two brothers had been drowned, this girl had thoughts for no one but |