NEW: Hurricane whallops low-lying areas of New Castle more with water than wind

Monday, August 29, 2011

Yesterday winds ravaged trees that in turn took down wires, and rains settled again in downtown New Castle, where flood waters made their way—unimpressed by sandbags—into stores with doors at street-level along South Greeley.  Squires was particularly hard-hit.

The Chappaqua Library’s stream spread itself across have the parking lot; water cascaded from the rocks behind Bell, water on the rec field reached almost to the base of the new elevated gazebo; the South Greeley parking lot, vacant because of ongoing paving, had grown to a lake four feet deep by mid-morning, then down to two feet deep by afternoon. Kids frolicked and rafted among the dumpsters.

Late Sunday afternoon 12 huge Con Ed trucks with cherry picker arm and buckets lined up along the south side of Roaring Brook Road, stretching from the high school entrance to Apple Tree Close.  They had come, one worker said, to fan out and locate the source of a massive power outage that affected homes down Route 117 and turned traffic lights dark both at Roaring Brook Road and at the intersection of 117 and King Street.

At 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, Con Ed positioned a “customer information” trailer at the Chappaqua train station, to wait for a truckload of dry ice making its way to Chappaqua from Bedford, where, it was reported, the entire town had been shut down by the storm.  People chatted as they waited, then repaired to their cars as the evening grew chilly.  They all materialized again when the truck arrived about 9:45 p.m.  Con Ed workers passed out chunks of dry ice the size of shoe boxes, one and two to a customer, along with instructions on how to handle it (not with bare hands), telling people that the dry ice would last about 12 hours.

Con Ed spokespersons estimate that the power may be restored by September 1.  Everyone looking for dry ice was hoping very hard that the estimate was a “worst case” and that Con Ed would do better—a lot better.