Lester:

First off, thanks for a great job on the site. We lived in Middleburgh for nine years and left with great regret, but we still love the valley and are back often.

I’ll rely on you to decide whether any of this is useful, and if so, how to put it either in the blog or elsewhere on the site. You’re welcome to attribute these notes with my name.

Based on a lot of professional work I’ve done on emergency vehicle routing and evac planning, I’d like to offer a few thoughts for folks as they consider the matter of clearing out in the event of an incident (or, for that matter, a major flood not involving a dam break).

First off, while Tom Wolfe did a great service by providing routes with elevations along the way, I’d note that particularly during what DEP terms a “wet weather dam break,” one can’t assume that heading to higher ground is always going to be a straightforward process. When culverts under roads or streams alongside them fill up, you can end up with a lot of water crossing the road, pushing to the shoulder anything attempting to climb it. We saw that in ’96 on Stoney Brook Road above 30 – I lived on Lower Stoney Brook (now Frisbieville), and while LSB was indeed lower in elevation (and close to the Creek), we had no problem going back to our house, the Fire Police had upper Stoney Brook closed because of an overwhelmed culvert that was sending a lot of water diagonally across the road.

(This brings to mind another wet weather issue: the water crossing Upper Stoney Brook was eventually a moot point when a tree loosened up enough to fall across the road. If you don’t have a deep ground freeze, and even sometimes when you do, you may find that routes through the woods become dead ends.)

The moral of the story on “head for the hills” is to know a couple of routes up and out, not just one.

Next point: while four wheel drive can be nice, if at all possible one’s evacuation plans should not rely on having to make use of it. I can tell you dozens of stories of people going off road for the first time during evacs – trying to drive the Yukon over a Jeep trail, for example. Sometimes all goes fine, but often the combination of mud and incline (remember, we’re trying to go to higher ground here) is too much – those things are much more willing to slide backward downhill than people may think.

Related to this point is the warning that when people take chances during evacuations, they jeopardize not only their own safety but, frequently, the viability of the evacuation route itself.

Finally, it’s very true that “out of sight is out of mind” during these events. If your house is high and dry, that doesn’t mean your complete route out of the valley is. Again looking back to ’96, there were several feet of water in the Villages of Schoharie and Middleburgh, while we were sitting in our house between the two Villages looking out at, basically, dry ground (save for a 2-acre sinkhole in one of the Shauls’ fields, about 1100’ away). Couple this with the aforementioned blockage on Upper Stoney Brook, and you have someone sitting high and dry hoping it stays that way. Getting information via radio and TV before leaving the house is critical, as is keeping a radio on in the car. You had a piece from Jerry Zink of Schoharie County RACES in the blog; RACES operates through the Cobleskill repeater (146.610 MHz) up on the mountain, and one would likely hear a bit of information on conditions over the scanner as well. (Disclaimer: I was a member of the Schoharie County Amateur Radio Association when we were local, but never had to get involved during a storm situation other than in providing some weather and power updates from home.)

Thanks again for all your efforts. Please let me know if I can provide any clarifications.

-- Best, Steve Allocco, Menands