As the days go on more details get released about the victims from the flooding in Washington's Crossing. Above is one picture that just gets you. It's the Seley family from Charlotte, N.C. Confirmed lost were the mother, Katheryn, 32, and still unaccounted for are the two younger children. Also lost were Enzo, 78, and Linda, 74, Depiero, and Yuko Love, 64, all from Newtown, PA, and Titusville town resident Susan Barnhart, 53. The search continues for the two missing children and local leaders from Upper Makefield and the Governor have pledged to continue until they are found. It may become like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
While that pledge is heartfelt and with good intention the enormity and probability of locating them wanes with each day. While searching these areas becomes somewhat easier as the water levels decrease there is no telling if the children's bodies made it into the Delaware. If they did the 60,000 cfs flows, now down to just under 30,000 can carry them far distances. But then again, they could also be right in the general vicinity where the initial incident happened. You just don't know.
As with all large scale incidents, like I saw at the World Trade Center, and Hurricane's Katrina and Sandy, eventually the area gets locked down. Most of the major roads around the incident have been damaged or destroyed. Now that images of the family and details are out the story has become a major news event and at just about every police blockade there are news crews camped out.
While it may have been a stretch for the bodies to have made it into the Delaware there is a place that catches just about any kind of debris traveling downriver. It's on the Morrisville side of the Delaware River opposite Trenton. As I've researched in the past, the old and new levy systems were built but there are sections of wooded areas that still jut out into the river. I thought it might be a good thing to just go and take a walk and look. Sometimes recoveries are simple with bodies right there, regardless of the amount of damage or distance they travel.
Traveling upriver I got detoured to where the Delaware Canal crosses Woodside Road near the Scudder's Falls Bridge (Route 295). They must have opened the flood gates to drain the canal to make searching the area easier. Besides the mud one of the problems I saw was all of the blowdown, or washdown from the force of the water, of the foliage along the canal and creek beds that will soon stand back up, making access and searching those areas much more difficult.
I went and found the rain totals for Saturday July 15th when the storm hit. In an hour and 15 minutes it rained over 5 inches and went to 7 inches a few hours later. That's a lot of water in a short period of time. During press conferences the police and fire chiefs are stating, especially targeted at trolls who blame the drivers, that these people in the 11 cars affected did not attempt to drive through flood waters, they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Again, it could have been any one of us.
