Nine Years After the Gunfire

Photo by David Marsland, with permission through Creative Commons 

It started at 10:30 in the morning. 

It was Friday April 3, 2009. We were getting ready to go work downtown for First Friday. We heard the helicopters low overhead. We lived a few blocks away from the American Civic Association, where a gunman had blocked the rear exit of the building with his father’s truck and then entered the front door firing.

His name was Jiverly Wong and that is the only attention I shall give him.

He didn’t speak. He just fired bullets. He stepped into an ESL class and shot thirteen of the sixteen people in there. He made hostages of students from other classrooms. Police arrived quickly and at the sounds of the alarms, the gunman shot himself.

It was 10:33 am. He fired 88 rounds from a 9mm Beretta. He fired 11 rounds from a .45-caliber Beretta.

A wounded receptionist, Shirley DeLucia, 61, crawled under the desk and called 911. She stayed on the phone for almost 40 minutes, relaying information as it was happening to the police, at which point the SWAT team entered. They didn’t know the shooter was dead. They found two more semi-automatic pistols on his body.

By 2:33 it was over and the American Civic Association was empty. The streets were not. As I made my way through them—I wasn’t even thinking about getting across the bridge—my city was in mourning. Families were grieving together, openly weeping. It’s still hard for me to think about. It was overwhelming.

In four hours my city was changed, forever altered. I could feel it on the street, covered in news vans and dressed-up reporters from every channel I had ever heard of and a few I hadn’t. We don’t forget. Every time another mass shooting happens we remember. Every time a mass shooting happens, every survivor is thrown back into the moment where they thought their lives were about to end.

At the time, it was the largest number of deaths due to a single-person mass shooting. It saddens me to think that there have been so many that we don't remember them all. And sadder yet to think that because they weren't young, white school children, we are often one that goes unremembered.

This is not a competition. There is no competition in death. In death, everyone loses. But there are tender truths revealed in how we respond. They should all be remembered.

As I finish this, it is 2:33 in the afternoon and I honor those whose lives were lost that day, nine years ago. It cuts a little deeper this year, considering the current tone of our country concerning immigrants. What makes us different makes us stronger:

• Almir Olimpio Alves, 43, a Brazilian Ph.D. in Mathematics, a visiting scholar at Binghamton University, attending English classes at the Civic Association
• Dolores Yigal, 53, a recent immigrant from the Philippines 
• Hai Hong Zhong, 54, an immigrant from China
• Hong Xiu "Amy" Mao Marsland, 35, a nail technician, immigrated from China in 2006
• Jiang Ling, 22, an immigrant from China
• Lan Ho, 39, an immigrant from Vietnam
• Layla Khalil, 53, an Iraqi mother of three children
• Li Guo, 47, a visiting scholar from China
• Marc Henry Bernard, 44, an immigrant from Haiti 
• Maria Sonia Bernard, 46, an immigrant from Haiti
• Maria Zobniw, 60, a part-time caseworker at the Civic Association, whose parents were from Ukraine 
• Parveen Ali, 26, an immigrant from northern Pakistan 
• Roberta King, 72, an English language teacher substituting for a teacher on vacation, who was a local substitute for many years

Just down Front Street, the American Civic Association Park has a memorial to the thirteen victims, showing thirteen doves in flight that shine as lights at night, as seen in the accompanying photo.

May we all be reminded that violence is a choice. Choose love. Choose kindness. Choose life.

100 Years Later, the Binghamton Clothing Company Factory Fire

Group burial at Spring Forest Cemetery, 1913.

In 1913, the Binghamton Clothing Company manufactured men’s work overalls in a large four-story building which stood downtown, in the main part of the city. The building had previously been occupied by a cigar factory, where it sat at 17 Wall Street. The back of the factory adjoined with the McKallor Drug Company. The north side of the building looked out over Henry Street, near the new Post Office. The Chenango River ran nearby on the far end of Wall Street.

It was July 22, a hot Tuesday at the factory, where all the windows and doors hung open, hoping to catch a breeze. The women were used to working in their underslips and stays when the summer sweltered, 150 women crammed into four floors of machines. On that particular day, there were only 111 women working. The Binghamton Clothing Company had been running frequent fire drills since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, where 146 workers were killed.

The Binghamton girls could clear the building in 20 seconds, with Nellie Connor clapping a loud and steady walking rhythm upstairs, and foreman Sidney Dimmock doing the same downstairs. When the fire drill gong sounded that afternoon, most of the girls didn’t hurry to leave. Some, because they were paid per piece and it was time taken from their work, and others because they were not dressed fit enough to present themselves upon the street.

The girls upstairs didn’t know that an employee, Mrs. William Whitney, stated that she felt an unusual heat in the building at 1 o’clock. They also didn’t know that she alerted the girls downstairs to the smell of smoke at 2 o’clock, when an investigation ensued. At 2:30, flames were discovered. Reed Freemen, president and owner of the factory, tried to douse the fire with buckets of water, along with one of the cutters, Amber Fuller. When they couldn’t put the fire out, Reed pulled the alarm. Unlike their drills, this time, the alarm gong repeated continuously.

The fire started in the basement, building up and feeding on scraps. The open windows and doorways created a chimney of oxygen. The fire shot upward, venting through every opening it could find, including the elevator shaft. Those working on the first and second floors were alerted by the screams of Mrs. Reed B. Freeman, the wife of the President of the company, and could smell fire themselves.

By the time the smoke was thick enough to be a warning that the fire was serious, the wooden stairwell was in flames. On the fourth floor, fifty women had been working knee to knee on the machines that cut and sewed the patterns for the overalls. One woman who survived admitted that a girl had been reluctant to leave because of her state of dress and they had all settled back to their machines after her comment. The third floor did not fare better. Women leapt out of windows to escape the blaze. Half a dozen women, on fire, ran in their shirt dresses from the burning building straight into the Chenango River.

Thick smoke obscuring the building.

The only means of exit were a single stairwell and two small fire ladders. The fire alarm rang just before 3 o’clock and within eighteen minutes, the factory was a pile of ash and ember. At the time of the alarm, the fire company was already at work halfway across the city. In the twenty-four hours previous to the factory blaze, they had been out on five other calls due to drought. They only lost five minutes in responding but when they arrived, the heat was so intense it singed their wooden ladders and the water pressure was low in their hoses. The heat was so great they couldn’t enter; every window was full of fire.

Men digging in the rubble for bodies.

The whole of the building was charred and collapsed by 4 o’clock in the afternoon and it was all they could do to try to save the buildings around the factory. The walls and roof were caved in. Thirty-one people lost their lives in the fire. Only ten of those bodies were identifiable; the other victims’ names were taken from the employee registry. The firemen, police, and other volunteers digging through the debris were pulling out pieces, not whole bodies. 

The newspaper the next day reported: “Of the 125 girls on payroll, only seventeen have been accounted for as uninjured. Twenty-two are in the hospitals. Eight are being cared for in private homes.” They allowed for a number of them to have made it free of the building and sought swift safety at home. Several of the girls that lived were near insanity from their experience and pain.

The funeral procession of caskets headed for the cemetery.

A public funeral was held at the Stone Opera House on Chenango Street on July 28, for the unidentified women. There were 20,000 people in attendance. Eighteen of the workers were burned beyond recognition and buried in a large circle on a knoll in the center of the Spring Forest Cemetery.

The morning after the fire.

The true cause of the blaze was never discovered. The Binghamton Clothing Company fire was a loss of $100,000, beyond the lives gone, and it never resumed business. The owner of the company, Reed Freeman, heartbroken, spent the rest of his life caring for the families of the deceased.

In 2009, Binghamton dedicated a plaque along the Riverwalk downtown, near where the factory stood, to those who lost their lives in the fire. It holds the names of the 31 people killed in the blaze. On that day, two people, specifically, were honored for their actions and their sacrifice.

The memorial across from where the original factory stood.

Nellie Connor had been employed by the Binghamton Clothing Company for 31 years, and was looked up to by many of the workers. She hurried the other girls out as best she could, clapping a steady rhythm. Her body was identified by her gold pocket watch, fused together from the heat, at the third floor landing, surrounded by the remains of five other women, huddled against her.

Sidney Dimmock, the company foreman who had been with them for 16 years, was in charge of the fire drills. According to survivor reports, he was clapping his hands at a quick pace also, to hurry the girls along as they exited the building. He ran into the fire twice, and carried two women to safety. He ran back in for more. He never returned.

Following the deadly blaze in 1913, George F. Johnson, a local shoe factory owner, fitted his factories with sprinkler systems and other safety precautions. He was also one of the first businessmen in the country to cut his worker’s hours from 9.5 to 8 hours without cutting their pay. Thanks to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the Binghamton Clothing Company fire, worker conditions in the country began to shift.

The victims of the Binghamton Clothing Company Factory Fire

Mary Bianca

Martha D. Burdick

Ruth A. Button

Edith M. Chernoff

Stella M. Clark

Nellie Theresa Connor

Mary Josephine Creegan

Catherine Crowe

Sidney Dimmock

Margaret Dimon

Sarah Doran

Hattie Freeman

Mrs. John (Cassie) Fulmer

Nellie F. Gleason

Ida G. Golden

Louise Hartman

Emma D. Houghtaling

Lena Marie Kennedy

Nellie Kison

Mary Pryor

Bessie Ray

Emma G. Reid

Lizzie Risley

John Schermerhorn

Lou G. Shove

Mary T. Smith

Mary E. Sullivan

Ella M. White

3 unidentified died

Sudden Loss

“It never gets easier,” I said to a young man in grief. Losing people is always hard. It’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to be mad. It’s not supposed to be pleasant.

My friend Thatch put it best, sitting across from me at the picnic table, bringing comfort to a dark moment. He said there’s a box in your brain, where you compartmentalize your friends, where all the bits and pieces of who they are to you live. Death upends the contents of that box and scatters them. The scattering is grief. It brings old things to the surface.

Time is not relevant. You have to relive every memory all over again, with new eyes. And your new eyes perceive those memories with the knowledge that the living, laughing friend in your recollections is now dead. It’s hardly the amount of time we spend with someone that prompts our grief, it’s the depth in the time spent together that does.

No, it never gets easier, but with each loss we have to navigate, with each grieving we endure and push past, we get stronger. We learn tools to transform the grief. We hold onto the knowledge that someday, though we will always miss them, we will be happy for their peace. Even if that day is not today.

We were on the mountain at a festival last week when news reached us of the sudden passing of our friend Freya Moon Greenleaf. I was grateful to hear the bad news in the midst of a spiritual container, surrounded by friends and fellow community members. Miles away from our home community, those of us who had travelled to the festival came together in our sorrow.

We gathered in the Ancestor Shrine, in the woods by the water, and called in our ancestors to welcome Freya to Spirit. We hung a prayer ribbon for her and wished her peace. We wished that her next turn around the earth will be happier and better for her. That part was for her, to honor her. But the grief is still real. Today, it is still fresh and still here.

“Love,” Sarahluna whispered to me, “just love.” And she was right. When you’re grieving the only place that’s safe to go is love. The best way we can honor those lost to us is to live in the world as brightly as we can. To laugh, touch, connect. To live, breathe and love.

That’s the part of grief that’s about us. We hurt because we know we won’t see our friends and loved ones anymore. We are hurting. They are not. Every breath we take reminds us of that. It also reminds us that we are alive. So we tell the people we love that we love them and hold tightly to them because in death we know how quickly a light can go out. So we breathe into those lights, to strengthen their flame.

I am lighting candles for your safe travels, Freya.

May the ancestors welcome you home.

May the memory of your laughter outshine the loss of you soon.

Flooding in Binghamton, Part V

September 17, 2011:

One week later and looking ahead.

The water up to the flood wall, photo from newsfeed.

It’s freezing right now. It’s a beautiful wintry night, as if the earth has emerged from a trance the way I do, so bitterly cold you can’t get your bones warm. I can feel the chill coming off her, through my walls and into my home, radiating off the wooden floor. We have no heat right now.

Tonight I am thinking about all of those displaced people, a couple hundred left who cannot go back home, whose homes are not safe. And so many more still trying to replace heat and hot water tanks. And still some without power until all the homes are checked. Everyone has a flood story, ranging from inconvenience to devastation to despair.

The damage is unbelievable. Every area that was underwater has to be gone through, one house at a time, by the city code workers checking the foundations and looking for hazards that would compromise the safety of the home. Like the flood in 2006, many homes will need some serious work before their owners can rehabitate. What happens to them between now and then? Other houses have been condemned, which means owners are not allowed to step foot inside. So when I say people have lost everything, I mean everything.

It could have been worse. It’s my mantra right now. It could have been worse. That doesn’t make the reality less bad. It makes things like heat, water, shelter, basic hygiene more important. More relevant. I can’t even imagine what the people of New Orleans went through after Katrina. I just can’t let myself think about it.

Downtown Owego, underwater, newsfeed photo.

Owego was underwater. Johnson City was underwater. Twin Orchards was underwater. Conklin, Kirkwood, Union, Windsor, Unadilla, Binghamton, Apalachin… and so many more places were partially or fully underwater. Several NYSEG substations flooded. Two sewage treatment plants flooded. An entire school was lost in Endicott. It was the first week back. Union, Vestal and Conklin towns are still under curfews and some towns have to boil water, signs of lingering effects.

Most people have heard of the pet store in Johnson City, who did not evacuate their animals on Wednesday and Thursday morning were not allowed into the building that was underwater. It wasn’t safe to go into the water and at that point, unfortunately, authorities were rushing to evacuate residents who had become priority. One hundred animals died. It’s saddening. It’s saddening that there was any loss of life.

It could have been worse.

The police, guardsmen and first responders, including FEMA workers, have been working tirelessly, often on 12 or 14 hour shifts to get people home and cleanups in motion. Dozens of donation centers have opened up handing out food and clothes to families who lost their homes. Businesses are pitching in to raise money for flood victims and/or do their laundry for them, offer free bowling games, etc. From the debris of what was left behind, the idea of community is growing from the muck.

I have a story second-hand of Wegmans, our favorite grocery store, handing a check to an employee whose house flooded that would cover the costs of a new water heater and furnace. I have followed the stories on Facebook of people stopping into Whole in the Wall, a favorite local restaurant, to help clean up and rip out the sodden insulation. The fact that they thanked another local restaurant, The Lost Dog Café, for feeding them during the cleanup is heartwarming.

Lourdes Hospital, 2011, photo from newsfeed.

In 2006 Lourdes Hospital, on the river, flooded and had to be evacuated. Just this past April they finished the construction of their new flood walls. They held beautifully. In aerial photos you can see the flooding of their parking lots around it, but besides reports of needing to use generator power, the hospital remained safe.

I am proud of my city. We learned from the last flood and while this one is proving to be more devastating, the information for residents came quicker and the response time was faster as well. We weren’t prepared but we were better prepared all the same.

After a natural disaster, there is no such thing as business as usual, though it's true the world keeps moving forward. Perhaps we need to be more like the water that ravaged us, flexible and changing and less like the earth we build our homes with. It’s more metaphor than opinion. We think of earth as stability and security (at least, those of us who don’t live in areas prone to earthquakes).  We build our homes and think we are safe within them. But in Ouaquaga Creek, the flood waters move stones the size of cars with ease. I keep thinking of a time when humans were nomadic, moving seasonally to suit the changes of the land instead of figuring out ways to make the land do what we want it to do.

There are layers to everything and my brain tends to find strange nooks and crannies. We’re coming up on the Autumnal Equinox, a time of balance as we are coming out of an extreme natural imbalance. Many of the houses that were flooded also flooded in 2006. Those residents are facing a tough decision of whether or not to rebuild (again) or move. There’s this community feeling of needing to rebuild to show that we’re strong and we can overcome… in a general sense. But at the individual level of existing paycheck to paycheck, how many times do you watch your home flood before deciding that rebuilding may be a fool’s errand? I do not envy those faced with such a decision.

There’s no way to tidy this up in a conclusion. We are still learning the extent of damages and we are still figuring out what needs to be done for the immediate and distant futures. You may not hear much about us on the news anymore, but the reality is that the work of recovery is only just beginning. For us, this is just starting. Be grateful for the many blessings you have.

Keep us in your thoughts. Keep us in your hearts.

Flooding in Binghamton, Part IV

September 11, 2011:

The fellowship of friends.

On a day when our city was still underwater, relevant and happening now, the world retreated to 10 years past, a day no one can ever forget. I know where I was and everything that happened the moment I first saw the news. It is forever etched into me like grooves on vinyl. I can close my eyes and replay it enough on my own. I do not ever wish to watch it again. For me, today, my emotions are too raw, and we’re still in this current disaster.

Instead it was a morning of finding out what roads were open and what areas were still underwater, to see if we could get to a last minute gathering of friends to barbecue chicken salvaged from a home that miraculously missed the flood by a couple of houses. It had lost power and the meat wouldn’t keep.

I was weary and feeling vulnerable, but needed the comfort of friends. I needed the touch of people I loved. We are humans and we are meant to touch one another. It’s a language that we do not often make use of. We isolate our bodies as if we are each islands in an ocean, with so much space between us. For days I have existed on a physical island, cut off from the world by real water. And I needed those bridges back. I needed to see my friends and see their safety.

And, after two days eating tuna on crackers, chicken sounded really good. Just before we left, a storm rolled in and I cried. I did. The sound of the rain was too much, too soon, and I immediately found myself uncertain of leaving home. So I made myself, and was glad I did.

The company was a mix of exhausted, grateful, heartbroken, empty, hopeful and open people but the common thread was presence and sincerity. Gratitude. There is an openness in people who have faced a great change. Some may be overwhelmed by despair, some may hold on by staying in motion, but it is the moment where they stand together just before everything alters that connects them.

My city is connected because this flood happened to us. My county is connected because this event happened here. Those who live on the Chenango River and the Susquehanna River are all connected, because we are at their mercies. It’s not personal, it’s Mother Nature. Maybe the lesson we’re supposed to take away from a flood is bigger than the obvious ones of detachment from material things. These disasters throw us back into our bodies, pulling us forcibly out of the routine day-to-day factory world we live in and push us back into being alive.

I had gone for companionship and was unaware at how closed in my body was for a while. Taking a breath, I leaned over and put my head on my friend’s shoulder. And the shell I had built that was my fear of being flooded finally broke. I was able to stop myself from sobbing but I sat there, touching, and having gratitude that everyone I loved was all right.

In a way, it’s an interesting juxtaposition. In 2001 my partner and I had just moved to this city. We knew no one. Had a friend not called from Boston to ask us if we were okay (he thought we were much closer to NYC) we might not have known. We might not have connected the television up in time to see the second plane hit, to watch it as it was happening. We might not have spent 24 hours at the table, just the two of us, isolated from our loved ones by miles, watching the bodies fall.

This year found me experiencing that same wave of helplessness at the grief and loss of so many people’s sense of home and stability. Feeling useless in a city that needs help is much better done in a room of friends. I know people who have lost. I can’t help but think if I lost everything, what would I miss? From that perspective, I realize I have much more than I need.

It is important that those who were spared help take up the excess for those who were devastated and I am watching it happen. I am helping it happen. I have watched passersby stepping in to help carry loads to the curbside. I have been one of them, talking to more neighbors in the last few days than I have in ten years. I have heard that community folk are helping local businesses clean up, bringing offerings of food and water where they are not as physically able.

We’re taking care of each other. We will take care of each other.

Flood Gratitude

            I have gratitude that my little family was all in one place during the flood. That my partner was able to get home before roads and bridges were closed. I have gratitude for hands to hold and shoulders to lean on. For friends who delivered cat litter to us when we realized we didn’t have any. Everyone I know is safe.

            I have gratitude for water we collected before the river flooded. I have so much gratitude for water I can drink. I have gratitude for gas that allows me to boil water before drinking it. I have gratitude for power that flickered but didn’t die, that allows me to keep in touch with loved ones far away and assure them of our safety.

            I am grateful the river has crested and that the waters are retreating. I am grateful for the brief rains that have washed the hazardous materials away and cleansed the vegetation drowning in mud. I am grateful for a landlord who made us a priority though he was evacuated from his home. I am grateful for the sump pump and the end to the flash flood warnings.

            I am grateful to the emergency crews who worked through the heavy rain and the flooding to safeguard the city and evacuate people, tolerating and understanding the energies of scared and panicked residents. I am grateful to the internet and news for offering up-to-date and as-it-was-happening reports. I am grateful that we had enough food. I am mostly grateful that I have plenty of unneeded belongings that will allow me to share with those who are now without.

Flooding in Binghamton, Part III

September 9, 2011:

The waters are receding.

Behind Riverside Drive.

In my city, the waters are receding. The river crested overnight, allowing me a sigh of relief. We could stop waiting for the physical swell to get worse. Roads and bridges are still closed. The police, guardsmen and emergency responders tell us that the best way we can help is to stay home- those of us whose homes are not underwater. I think I am still in shock.

Most people are already moving forward, cleaning out basements, replacing water heaters, and trying to get back to work. Some people are boiling or disinfecting water and waiting for their power to come on. A quarter of the city is still crammed into evacuation centers where they have been for over 48 hours, wondering what has become of their homes and facing the possibility they have lost everything. I have to remind myself of that… and try not to feel guilty for being spared.

It was guilt that pulled me out of my house for another walk with my friend. I walked the edges of two rivers and found the line between what was home and what was water blurred. People were crying, sitting on their porches in a state of shock, standing in small clumps, everyone making eye contact, coming out of their personal isolation and looking for connection. They wanted to know they weren’t alone. In hard times, we need to know we’re not alone.

People stood at the new shoreline, staring. They all said the same thing- I can’t believe how much water there is. An old woman cried next to me, for her two daughters, both flooded and evacuated. She told me how she had watched the water line creep up into the houses from her apartment, and pointed behind where we stood. Only then did I notice the mud in the grass and the debris line of leaves, algae and twigs behind us. Only then did I realize that the water had been six feet higher than what I was looking at, just the night before.

It’s one thing to watch the photos on the internet and news. It’s another thing to stand before a force of nature and drink it in with your own eyes. Any excitement I might have felt at the idea of that much water was sobered by its reality. Fallen trees were crossing my field of vision in mere seconds, the river was moving that fast. The sun was shining and the water was going down, but the danger was still there. The floodwater is not done yet. It’s not time for business as usual yet.

My friend and I, mindful of the pain and grief around us, spent our time contemplating what it means to be an animal in the natural world, stopping often to watch the water in motion silently. We were not people who wanted to put their lives in danger. We were pagan women who needed to see the destruction caused to our city, to remind ourselves of the awe-full power of nature. We needed to know just how lucky we were.

We overheard residents along the Susquehanna discussing how they had been looted. They were pulling rugs and furniture to the curb, trying to avoid prolonged contact with the thick, viscous and stinking mud left in the wake of the water. It’s the kind of smell you can’t imagine ever getting out of your olfactory cavities. Trust me.

I found the mummified remains of a critter in mud on the road between the old debris line and the new one. It might have been a raccoon. It could have been someone’s pet. It might have been long dead and buried elsewhere, stirred by the waters and risen again. It was a grim reminder either way. Our bodies are our bodies and mine is still walking and breathing and praying. I spoke one for the corpse, wishing its spirit peace. It’s something I do.

Backtracking home the way we came, we saw the water had dropped two feet since we started. It was a significant visual acknowledgment. The ground seemed a bit more solid beneath me. We went back, quietly up the Chenango and into the residents who were trying to go about their everyday, arguing with the very people who had been fighting the rising waters on our behalf. To keep us all safe, even the noisy people who were untouched by the flood, and for whom it was easy to forget that this just happened yesterday. Is still happening to us.

The sun is shining. The waters are retreating. The heat will bake the mud that remains, turning it back into earth.

The homes behind Riverside Drive.

You can see all the mud left behind.

The leaves in the forefront show the original flood line, before it started to retreat.

We fared better than others. This is Apalachin, and the flood line reached up the sign. Photo by Laylla Forsyth.

September 10, 2011:

What the water leaves behind.

Four days in and towns around us are still underwater. People’s lives are still in limbo. The pictures we’re seeing are worse than I could imagine. It’s not New Orleans after Katrina. It’s not Joplin. It could be worse- it could always be worse. And for us, it’s the worst we’ve seen. We stayed to the house again, watching reports for roads open and closed, or washed away. Today, people are talking. Neighbors are reaching out. Strangers are helping strangers. My people are showing their best colors.

I walked the park at sunset, escaping the sounds of the landlord pushing the last of the water from the basement. The wooded pass is still covered with fungus of varied and multiple hues and shapes, a testament to rebirth. But the smell filtering into the beautiful violet and lavender sky was of death and dank and what gets left behind. The houses along the park were flooded from oversaturated ground tables and the furniture, rugs and old Christmas trees piled on the curb reeked against a Monet-colored sky. Drunk college kids played golf in the public areas while local residents carried belongings outdoors, to be carted to the dump.

The Mayor announced that no one would have to pay a garbage fee for flood debris. For the next week the bus lines will run free of charge, with an apology that some of the roads are still inaccessible. We absolutely still have no idea the extent of the damage.

Most of the people in the areas that are underwater (again) are people who live paycheck to paycheck. And insurance companies will quibble with them (again) over whether or not it was damage due to river-water-rising flooding or ground table saturation flooding. From our perspective it doesn’t matter. Devastation is devastation. When I think about the people who were hit hard by both floods, I wonder how much horror one heart is meant to be able to hold. This is a devastation that will linger emotionally long after the garbage and debris are cleared away.

I’m suddenly starting to see just how lucky we are.

Yesterday: Part II, My city is underwater.

Tomorrow: Part IV, The fellowship of friends

Flooding in Binghamton, Part II

September 8, 2011

My city is underwater.

Everyone I know is safe. A number of friends had to abandon their homes in the evacuation. They are still evacuating people from their homes. The sun is out but the rivers are still rising. They evacuated houses to the west of us, south if us, east of us and to the north of us.

Downtown Binghamton at its worst, aerial photo from newsfeed.

…but we still have power. The hot water tank can be relit or replaced. The water can be emptied from the basement. All of the roads into the city are closed. All of the bridges are closed. We’re in a state of emergency. It’s hard to find out what’s open or closed. The helicopters and sirens are becoming constant background noise. We can’t drink the water. If you were evacuated in 2006, you MUST leave your homes NOW. They’re coming to get you. The waters are still rising. The river hasn’t crested…

There was no rain today, though the waters continued to rise. My morning glories opened. The streets around me were soggy but visible. The dawn brought some familiarity as early-morning neighbors walked their dogs. And then the pictures poured in across the internet and the water levels kept rising and more people were evacuated as my landlord pumped more water from the basement.

I am going to create an altar to the Almighty Sump Pump, a breathing and whirring fountain deity. I’m beginning to understand how divinities were born... not always from fear, but sometimes from gratitude. Thank you, oh spirit of the Sump Pump, who takes the bad water out of my basement and returns it to the earth outside, to bake away in the heat of this hot summer sun… how can I have such an overwhelming feeling for a mechanical device? I think anyone who has been saved by one would understand.

Johnson City flooded, photo from newsfeed.

Shared experiences bond people. Looking at the breadth of the flooding on-line made me cry. Landmarks I should know well were barely discernable. I couldn’t believe those images were happening outside the walls of my house. The pull to go see it was strong, like wanting to see a body to make the death of it real. But it wasn’t over yet. I knew we’d be in the way, so a friend and I made a compromise and took a walk toward higher ground. When houses are flooding, or filling with water, they no longer feel safe. So we went outside.

            A walk in the park displayed a staggering variety of fungus carpeting the ground beneath us, decay and life wrapped up in one motion. The streets were so still we thought the city deserted. We talked of water and reflection and how it soothes and heals and also magnifies. Grounding the excess would be important. We talked about how natural disasters fear us back into our bodies, into ourselves. They remind us what it's like to be alive because being alive is both life and death. It was good to be outside. It was good to be with friends. It was good to see the sun.

Not an apple, a fungus, Recreation Park.

My friend said we believed them when they told us it wouldn't happen again in 2006. And people rebuilt. They said it wouldn't happen again for another 100 years. They said... but science is not divinatory and nature does not bend to its whims. They were sure. They were pretty damn sure. But it happened again, washing away the security net so many had held onto. It is happening. The damage is already worse than 2006, and continuing.

We had a conversation today about planning a lunch date to our favorite Chinese restaurant and a trip to the fabric store. But a moment ago I was sobered by a photo of the plaza underwater, where our restaurant lives, and the realization that the fabric store might not even be there... I can’t believe I forgot that earlier.

Vestal Plaza underwater, photo from newsfeed.

We simply don't know much yet. It just happened yesterday. It just happened today. It’s still happening. The water is still rising.

Tonight, my crisis mode is over, the shock is ebbing and the scope of the damage is more than a bit overwhelming. I reassured my family that no matter what they saw, we were okay and were going to be okay. And we will. And we are. But there is so much water everywhere, magnifying the grief and horror of what was lost. How long will it take to pull ourselves out this time? It is not lost on me that there is so much water here, flooding New York when Texas is on fire and so much land burns around our family there. It’s imbalance trying to right itself.

I am grateful for my family and friends and my breath right now. I am breathing. My family is okay. My friends are safe. We will help each other with what comes next. Dark moments remind us of what we have and illuminate that we have more than we need. I am grateful. And lucky. So very, very lucky.

Vestal Plaza, sunset. Photo attributed to Jen O'Brien and found on Facebook.

            I will sleep tonight and dream of the waters receding. I will dream of sunshine to come and bake the layers of water away, revealing what was lost beneath. Hold us in your thoughts, hold us in your dreams, as we do what humans do and rebuild again.

Yesterday: Part I, To evacuate or not to evacuate.

Tomorrow: Part III, The waters are receding.

Flooding in Binghamton, Part I

In June of 2006, Binghamton, NY made the news with the disastrous flooding that brought Broome County to a standstill. There hadn’t been a flood in 78 years, and officials felt safe in calling it a 100-year flood. Last Wednesday, areas of my city were once more being evacuated and my basement was under water. Most of us experience natural disasters as the current news story. In a population this large, most of them don’t affect us personally. We think the danger ends when we stop hearing about it, but for the survivors that’s when it begins. What follows is the first of five days of me, experiencing the flood, mostly personal with some relevant perspectives.

What’s happening here is still happening.

September 7, 2011

To evacuate or not to evacuate.

We were prepared to lose power and water...

It had been raining a lot, as my green tomatoes lusting after sunshine could attest to. Wednesday afternoon, they said the flooding could be as bad as it was in June of 2006. Considering that many people and businesses have only just finished rebuilding, it was enough to create warranted fear. In 2006, the house my apartment is in had been spared from more than water in the basement, sitting high above the flood stages though close to the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers. I prepared the same way I had five years ago, by raising the electronics off the floor, just in case some water came up through the boards.

My landlord came by and pumped the water out of the basement twice during the day. While I couldn’t gauge the rate of the rising water, I felt like I didn’t have to worry. In 2006, the water stopped three inches from the first-story floorboards, and that was after 24 hours. But then the rain came, pummeling and pelting the sides of the house with a force I could not recall hearing anywhere else… except at a campground in the Adirondacks in my childhood. It was raining so hard, we were watching tiny rivulets of rivers forming and sweeping past us as my dad and brother tried to level the trailer. I remember someone pulling my brother out from underneath it and the fear of the almost-accident as a jack slipped in the mud.

That day I understood something terrible could have almost happened for one of the first times in my youth and that feeling was settling in me, in my adult body. I am not special. I have to reason to assume that we will be spared again, just because we were before. Fear crept over me as the rain continued, unrelenting. By the time the dark set in, the news was saying it was probably going to be worse than 2006. And our landlord, who lives a few blocks away, came by to pump again and told us he had been evacuated from his home.

I set to motion and filled every container I could find with water, in case our water treatment plants were flooded out. I lit candles on my Ancestor Altar and prayed to those who came before me, who weathered floods, tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, earthquakes and more. I didn’t pray for them to save me or to stop the flood- that’s not in my cosmology. I prayed to their spirit inside me and sought the strength and courage of their past survivals to quell my current fears. We might have to leave our home. We could lose everything. But we would survive. That breath made it easy to relax into doing what needed to be done. Waiting.

Every hour, I went down to the basement to check the water level. The sound of water rushing into the basement was too loud, magnified by the reflective surface creeping upward. But the creeping was slow enough and we would be okay. At some point, the rest of the house went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I kept vigil by the hour and left the news open on my computer. I had just begun to calm after reading that those who were going to be evacuated were receiving automated phone calls when the phone rang. It was the automated messaging system, instituted after the previous flood, telling us that three new areas were being evacuated around me.

I couldn’t tell if we were in the areas or not. After ten years I don’t know all the street names and I had to pull the map out to verify. Not us, but we were so close I wasn’t sure I could assume we’d be fine. And what about our cats? If we did evacuate, where would we go? Where could we take them? In a natural disaster, if you wait too long to go elsewhere, your choices of what to save get smaller and your options of physical ways to safety shrink vastly.

I don’t know what choice I would have made had we been pushed. I sat up all night, checking the basement every hour, and waiting for the knock on the door of men telling us we had to leave, prepared for them to pry my cat from my cold, dead fingers (because I would not have been able to leave her behind). But Bella slept in my lap as I waited, mentally running through checklists. I backed up all of my files and photos on sticks and put them in a Ziploc bag to take with me.

Looking around, I realized that, next to my partner and my two cats, in the core of me I truly believed that I could leave everything else behind. I made a pact, not with deity, but with myself, and I spoke it aloud to my Ancestors. If we were evacuated and the four of us managed to get to safety, I would accept the loss of everything else. And the fear of losing things ebbed in me.

It was a sleepless night of waiting, checking road closures and accessible evacuation centers. It was scarier in the dark, when the sound of the rain was so heavy on the skin of our house, filling slowly with water in its bowels. The raging storm outside served as isolator. Everything is scarier in the dark. I greeted the dawning sky with a weary sigh and allowed my eyes to close, if only for a few hours. I would let the morning show me what was yet to come.

Tomorrow: Part II, My City is Underwater