The village of Highland Falls, a military town in the shadow of West Point of about 3,700 people, has been home to a few floods over the years. Such is life when a brook feeding the Hudson River winds its way through homes and businesses.
But, until Sunday, the Orange County village hadn’t seen the type of flooding that comes with a summer’s worth of rain in a single day.
On Monday, Highland Falls residents began what's expected to be a lengthy clean-up process after flood waters filled basements, washed away roads and left some people without homes at all. To make matters worse, a leak in the village’s water line has helped disrupt the water supply, said Joe D’Onofrio, the village’s mayor for the last 28 years, whose own basement rapidly took in 4 feet of water.
“There’s mud down there, which I can clean up,” he said, recounting how quickly a few inches of water in his house turned into feet. “What’s going to hurt is I had a lot of personal pictures, and that you can’t.”
At least one death was reported in the Hudson Valley as the result of the storm.
D'Onofrio said the city has received more than 500 calls for assistance, mainly from people whose basements have been damaged. Officials have been helping residents remove the water from their homes. But D’Onofrio said that it will take federal aid to make the bigger repairs, like fixing the village's streets and sewer plant. Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus said a wastewater treatment plant had been compromised.
More than 20 roads were lost, he said.
“It isn’t like a pothole,” D’Onofrio said. “The road isn’t there.”
At a briefing Monday morning, Gov. Kathy Hochul called it a “1,000-year flood, adding that she had spoken with the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator — and that both had pledged assistance. The New York State Department of Transportation and Orange County Department of Public Works are thoroughly surveying roads and bridges in the area.
A family walks past construction equipment on a main street after heavy rainfall in Highland Falls, New York, on July 10, 2023.
State Transportation Department Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez said the Popolopen bridge would take time to repair. The state says it is deploying 23 bridge inspection teams from the Capital Region, Mohawk Valley, Southern Tier and Long Island as well as 10 damage assessment teams.
Hochul said storms like this one, which dropped at least 8 inches of rain down on some parts of the Hudson Valley, are now the new normal due to climate change.
“These are unprecedented weather events that keep hitting us, over and over and over again,” Hochul said. “So we must change our behavior as a planet, as a country, as a state and in our own homes.”
On Monday, the sound of rushing water flowed loudly from the brook that cuts through downtown Highland Falls, punctuated by the beeps of trucks digging up mud from the messy main drag. Army flags flew proudly from main street businesses, just down the way from the West Point Museum and visitors center, where tourists usually gather for tours of the military academy.
Jagged branches jutted out every which way on one small bridge that cuts through the downtown. Streets nearby the brook were covered in dirt. On a side street, people piled their wet and muddy belongings in the front yard to dry.
Directly across the street from the museum, a steady stream of cars and trucks passed by the entrance to the Sacred Heart Church of Jesus’ gym, where the American Red Cross quickly set up a shelter late Sunday. One by one, they dropped off bottles of water, paper towels and other dry goods — neighbors lending a hand to neighbors.
Governor Kathy Hochul visits Highland Falls and provides an update on the storms causing widespread flooding in the Mid-Hudson and Finger Lakes regions, July 10, 2023.
About a dozen cots were laid out across the gym floor, with all manners of fans — box fans, circular fans, pedestal fans — working to keep people cool despite the humid, sticky air. A couple volunteers worked to carry a television and entertainment stand up from the basement.
"The neighbors from down the street have lent us fans,” said Sue Roman, a Red Cross volunteer who is supervising the shelter. “We have other people asking for new resources. Some people have been coming in [and] dropping off water, and then their neighbors come in and pick up the water."
The gym is a remnant of the church’s school, which closed in the early 2000s. During the early days of the COVID pandemic, the gym was converted into a community thrift store, where people in need found furniture, clothing and other necessities, according to church volunteer Jeannette Scott, a parishioner who attended the school there in the 1960s.
“Just a couple weeks ago, we took [the thrift shop] out for some reason, unbeknownst to all of us, and now we have a shelter in place, which is awesome,” Scott said. “It was so meant to be.”
As of midday Monday, 11 people were staying at the shelter, Roman said. But the facility is prepared for more, just in case.
Highland Falls resident Milagro Castillo, whose apartment flooded, said she’s staying with her daughter who lives on a hill. She said a cleaning crew is going through her home now. Once they finish up, she’ll find out if she can move back in.
“We’ll see if I can,” Castillo said in Spanish. “And if I can’t, I don’t know.”
