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The Flood of 2011: Five Years Later

BLOOMSBURG — This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Flood of 2011. “Very bad. You lose a lot of your furniture and things you can’t repl...
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BLOOMSBURG -- This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Flood of 2011.

"Very bad. You lose a lot of your furniture and things you can't replace," Joanne Hess said.

Joanne Hess has lived in Bloomsburg for nine years. She stayed at her home on West 3rd Street after the flood. But she lives in fear.

"It's hard because you think well maybe it's going to happen again," Hess said.

Hess has seen her neighbors come and go. But many of her neighbors have had a hard time selling their houses.

"Nobody wants to buy them. Who would want to buy them? I wouldn't want to buy them," Hess said.

But on the other hand, Jason Taylor moved to Bloomsburg in January. He did not know about the Flood of 2011 until recently. He wishes he would have known.

"I probably wouldn't have moved to this location if I'd have known it was as dramatic as it was and hopefully we avoid it this year," Taylor said.

But in the five years since the flood, something good happened here.

A flood wall project stretching about a mile has been in the works for about a year and a half. It's almost 100 percent finished.

The wall is 14 feet tall at its highest point.

"Right now we are at protection so if there were an event today we would be able to protect Autoneum and Windsor," county commissioner Chris Young said.

But the wall does not protect everyone, like the residents on West 3rd Street.

"We need a flood wall for everything instead of just one place," Hess said.

The people we spoke with say they are keeping their fingers crossed that there won`t be another Flood like 2011, because a lot of them still have not fully recovered from five years ago.

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