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Counting blessings

PHILIP A. HOLMES/Sun-Gazette Don and Sandra Swarthout’s home, above, just off of Pleasant Steam Road in McIntyre Township, was destroyed by Friday morning’s flash flood, which pushed the property at least 40 feet down stream.

RALSTON — Overnight Thursday, Don Swarthout had been checking the level of Pleasant Stream, which runs behind the Bear Trap Lane property that has been his family’s home near Marsh Hill for more than 40 years.

“I looked out at different  times, checking the creek, and it really wasn’t too much at that point. I’ve lived here long enough I know you have to keep an eye on it,” he said.

During the early-morning hours Friday, Sandy Swarthout told her husband that it  sounded like the creek was getting higher.

“I got up, shined a flashlight out on the yard and the water was just ready to come up over bank. I told my wife, ‘We got to get out of here.’ “

There was no time to grab anything.

The two  jumped into their pickup truck and bolted to their grandson’s home nextdoor that was on a little higher ground. Swarthout told his grandson, Tyler Bebble, and his wife, Carly, that everyone was going to have to get out.

However, in a matter minutes, “a torrent of water just pushed everything,” including the Swarthout’s home, nearly 50 feet and toppled trees and filled the small dirt lane off of Pleasant Stream Road with several feet of water.

The couples were trapped for several hours as the out-of-control stream, swelled by several inches of rain, swirled around the house.

“It was very harrowing. Stuff was going underneath the house, things were banging,” Swarthout said.

“I truly thought this might be our last day on Earth. All we did during the night was sit and pray. That’s all we could do,” Swarthout said.

The four were rescued by first responders who reached them by boat sometime after sunrise.

“We raised our family, our kids here,” he said as he stood on his property Saturday afternoon.

“The home is completely destroyed. The kitchen is hanging over the creek, breaking off the house. There is nothing you can do with it, just put it in a pile and burn it, I guess,” he said.

“We got a few personal items. Most of our pictures are gone, but we could recover things that were hanging high enough on the wall, whatever the water didn’t get,” he said.

Several family members and friends spent much of Saturday helping the Swarthouts recover whatever could be saved. Swarthout suspected his grandson’s home also was a total loss.

“There is nothing we can do here. We’ll just have to find a new home,” Swarthout said.

“We were very fortunate. Yes, we pretty much lost all our material things, but we got our family,” he added.

Also trapped in their home Friday morning during the flash flood was Bill Hinkelman and his friend, Sue Nolan, who live in a two-story house along Pleasant Stream Road.

“I heard our generator running. It was outside. It sounded weird. Unbeknownst to us, the exhaust was under water already,” Hinkelman said.

Nolan got up and was shocked to see water on their first floor.

“Between 2:30 and 4 a.m., the water just kept coming up. We tried to leave, but between the house and our garage, the current was just too strong,” said Hinkelman said.

“We had nowhere to go, so we just stayed in the house and kept an eye on the water. We worried about the house possibly washing away, especially if the water kept rising,” he added.

“The water was flowing right through the house,” he said.

But in a matter of hours, the water began to go down.

“Until then, we just prayed,” Nolan said.

On a lighter note, the couple’s chicken coop was moved at least 30 feet during the storm, but all eight birds in it survived.

“We had eggs this morning,” Nolan said, laughing.

“Yes, they’re still laying eggs. It didn’t faze them that much at all,” Hinkelman said.

He and Nolan are staying at a relative’s home.

Down the road from Hinkelman’s home, Jim Manback and Jim Harkins, both of Lancaster County, were checking on the condition of a “weekend getaway” cabin they own with two other friends

The storm “totally changed the creek. The width of the creek practically doubled in size,” Manback said.

“We  had really no damage to our cabin except for a little water getting on our back porch. We were extremely lucky. This is one of the first buildings in this valley. I think it was built in 1903,” Manback said.

A neighbor’s cabin did not do so well.

“They had part of their foundation washed out. An entire addition at the back of the cabin was torn off the building,” Manback said.

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