Authorities evacuate a flooded Wassaic

WASSAIC — More than two dozen residents living in Wassaic’s downtown area were evacuated from their homes by the Wassaic Fire Company and Rescue Squad during the night of Sunday, March 6. The displaced people spent the wee hours of Monday, March 7 in the Amenia Town Hall gymnasium sleeping on cots provided by the Red Cross.Wassaic Fire Company Chief Scott Boardman said that it was about 8 p.m. on March 6 when he realized that the rapid rain, which had been coming down all day, was going to be a problem for the hamlet.A state of emergency was called by Deputy Town Supervisor Victoria Perotti at 11:30 p.m. on March 6.“Just after 11 I was called in,” explained Dawn Marie Klingner, the town’s new emergency response coordinator. “She’d been having conversations with the fire chief in Wassaic and eventually signed the declaration of a state of emergency.”Wassaic residents started arriving around 1 a.m., Klingner said, and 26 residents, some of them children, took shelter at Town Hall for the night.“Cots were set up by Red Cross,” she said. “We made some coffee, and you just try to make everybody as comfortable as possible.”Water from the heavy rains and melting snow converged in the basin that is the center of the hamlet of Wassaic, flooding the firehouse and spilling into several residential streets and backyards.“And it’s not just flooding,” Klingner pointed out. “There were heavy rains, and then along with the temperatures dropping, freezing rains and trees covered with ice. It made for treacherous travel for firemen last night.”“Last night I thought the whole culvert was going to let loose,” Boardman said Monday morning, referring to a drainage culvert on the Allen Sand & Gravel property that finally broke mid-morning on March 7, adding a second wave of water that then flowed down into Wassaic.“There’s so much water behind the firehouse we don’t know what pumps would do at this point,” Boardman said when asked how the department would be addressing the issue. “It will probably take a couple of hours to slow down before we can get in there.”This is not the first time Wassaic has had to deal with flooding; Supervisor Wayne Euvrard said an incident occurred a little over four years ago under very similar conditions. Back then, the emergency shelter location was set up at the Amenia firehouse.“Despite everything, it really was a great job done by all of the agencies involved,” Klingner said. “Everybody worked together really well.”