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Duryea councilman Frank Groblewski responds to residents angry about flooding by the Lackawanna River during the council’s monthly work session at the Duryea Municipal Building on Tuesday night.
BILL TARUTIS/FOR THE TIMES LEADER
John Rubel questions Duryea Borough Council on Tuesday.
BILL TARUTIS/FOR THE TIMES LEADER
Angry resident Kathy Supulski questions Duryea council.
BILL TARUTIS/for the times leader
DURYEA – When the Lackawanna River spilled into Duryea early Friday morning, it flooded into 339 homes and caused unprecedented damage in the borough.
On Tuesday, more than 100 borough residents came to the borough’s regularly scheduled council meeting to ask one question of their municipal leaders: Why?
Why was the levee designed by the federal government to protect the borough not extended past Stephenson Street to protect the entire borough? Why didn’t the borough do more to shore up the levee with sandbags overnight Thursday? Why were residents given less than an hour’s notice Friday morning to evacuate?
“I think people had to take their frustrations out, and my heart goes out to them,” Mayor Keith Moss said. “They’re trying to relieve on somebody, and if it’s us that they have to relieve on then I’ll take it.”
In a two-hour question-answer session that frequently turned heated, many residents blamed the council for failing to act quickly enough in the hours before a temporary levee overflowed near the Holy Rosary Cemetery off Chittenden Street.
“Nobody said ‘Why don’t we get together as a community and say let’s sandbag,’ ” resident Kathy Supulski said quizzically.
“I would have rather tried and failed than not try at all,” she shouted, prompting council to have her ejected from the meeting.
Councilman Frank Groblewski said council acted Thursday night on bad information from Luzerne County that the Susquehanna River, which the Lackawanna empties into, would crest at 37 feet, but Excelsior Hose Company firefighter Jerry Marsh took issue with that assessment.
He said the Luzerne County Emergency Management Agency sent a text message at 5 p.m. Thursday informing emergency responders and municipal officials that the Susquehanna would crest at 41 feet.
“I don’t want anyone up here (council) telling you different; they knew,” Marsh said. “That message was sent to every fire department and other emergency agency including your police department over the radio.”
Residents also questioned why the partial levee protecting Duryea from the Lackawanna River, a 10-year-old Army Corps of Engineers project, was never completed.
Councilman Al Akulonis Jr. said the borough has been trying to persuade the federal government to finish the project but that it requires presidential approval and federal funding that so far hasn’t materialized. The project has also encountered other roadblocks, including the discovery of previously unknown old graves in the way of the planned dike.
Akulonis also pointed to other factors responsible for the flooding that the borough couldn’t control, such as the effect of dikes on the Susquehanna River in backing up the flow of the Lackawanna River.
Moss said he believes the raising of levees in Wilkes-Barre and other communities exacerbated flooding in Duryea.
“I’ve been down with the county commissioners looking at where they want to put dikes in West Pittston and Exeter,” he said. “I told the county commissioners, if you want to do that, you might as well come to Duryea and buy every single house out, because that’s going to kill us.”
Council members reiterated that they are there to help borough residents. The borough has waived building permit fees and reduced inspection fees to state-mandated minimums, coordinated with Mericle Construction Inc. to provide free trash removal for flood victims and is working to secure 4,000 tetanus vaccination shots from Luzerne County, borough Manager Lois Morreale said.
Residents are encouraged to report damage to the Federal Emergency Management Agency as soon as possible and to seek help at the borough building when they need it, council members said.