Family Life

08.30.11 | Sarah Harnisch

   Update on Irene in New York: 86 roads were closed in 15 towns in Ulster County alone. Long stretches of the New York State Thruway by Albany were shut down with flooding Monday. 800-thousand people statewide were without power as of last night, the second most outages in the Central Hudson Gas and Electric Company's 100 year history. And 7 people across the state have been killed; 6, from drowning.
   Prattsville, New York was entirely washed away by Irene. That's in the Catskills area. 87 people were rescued. 21 of them were saved after 4 helicopter trips.  The area flooded when Schoharie Creek rose more than 15 feet in 12 hours and intense rainfall shedding off the Catskills sent a volume of water greater than that of Niagara Falls -- both the American and Canadian sides -- crashing through town.
   In Broome County, Windsor saw 4.7 inches of rain Sunday. In Delaware County, Roxbury had the most-- 8.9 inches. In Tioga county, Tioga Terrace was hardest hit-- with 2 and a half inches of rain. And in Susquehanna County, Montrose recieved over 7 inches of rain Sunday afternoon alone.
   If you had property damage-- New York State has tips on what to do first. You can get the information here.

 Update on Irene in Pennsylvania:
   The downed wires, toppled trees, broken utility poles and other remnants of Hurricane Irene are steadily being undone by PPL Electric Utilities crews. As of 11 a.m. Monday, 299,000 customers remained without service. 211,000 customers have been restored. PPL Electric Utilities says a massive workload-- some 4,000 trouble cases are still ahead of them in their workweek. Each individual job represents a handful of customers to a few hundred. The utility expects most customers will be restored within three to five days. They are receiving assistance from utility companies in Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Ohio and elsewhere. Based on the number of customer outages, Hurricane Irene ranks as the second-worst storm to hit PPL Electric Utilities' service area over the past 20 years, trailing only Hurricane Isabel of 2003, which affected 495,000 customers. Flooding is also still a concern. The Susquehanna River has not crested yet in Pennsylvania. Some 10 inches of rain fell in eastern parts of the state.