SHICKSHINNY,PA – Why come back? How many times can you start over?
They’re reasonable questions to ask residents and business owners in a small town with limited resources that has been flooded out numerous times over the last 40 years, the most devastating event this past September.
They’re reasonable questions to ask residents and business owners in a small town with limited resources that has been flooded out numerous times over the last 40 years, the most devastating event this past September.
Clarence Lewis wants to live in a town made special by its sense of community.
“You can’t go to Philadelphia, you can’t go to Allentown, you can’t go to Wilkes-Barre as we know it and sit down in the coffee shop and talk to the baker or the people who own it and say, ‘We want a doughnut named Flood Mud.’ … And the next thing you know, everybody is coming in asking for those things. It’s the (sense of) family that’s coming out,” Lewis said.
Pizza shop owner Jim Houseknecht likes that the town is small and safe, yet busy enough to support his livelihood.
The answers are a little different for everyone, but they follow a common theme – a strong thread that seems to weave through this river town community, reinforcing it to withstand a disaster that inflicted millions of dollars in damage to nearly all of the town’s 430 housing units and all but one of its 28 businesses and might otherwise have torn it apart.
The mayor of the borough of 838 residents seems to have a good grasp on what makes the town special and worth saving as well as why so many of her constituents wish to remain and are determined to see it thrive once again.
“We could have a fire that devastates the town. We could have sinkholes open up. For the love of God, we had an earthquake. You have to deal with it. There is no absolute safe place. So why would you not be where you feel you’re the happiest?” Mayor Beverly Moore said in a recent interview.
“I love this town. Everybody here knows just about everybody else. You know the people in the stores. It’s a great little place. It’s like a little secret. Just the traffic alone here could support our businesses,” she said.
Learning from history
The recent flood? She labels it an inconvenience.
“We’ve been through flooding before. Did we have a good flood plan? Absolutely. Did this last flood screw it up for me? Yup.
“But we go out as soon as we hear from (the emergency management agency), everybody starts moving their stuff, we don’t have anything hysterical going on. They all know they have to move it. You know at that point the chances are you’re going to have to replace your flooring, some of your walls,” Moore said.
She said it wouldn’t be feasible to raise up every home and business eight feet so they’re out of the flood zone. “And at the same time, I don’t think my town should become a ghost town because of it.”
Moore said Shickshinny will prepare a flood plan based on the most recent flooding that likely will address an even higher crest than the record 42.6 feet the Susquehanna River reached on Sept. 9.
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Read more: http://www.timesleader.com/news/Shickshinny_on_the_mend_11-27-2011.html#ixzz1ex5BtDtr
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