Click here to subscribe today or Login.
By CECE TODD; Times Leader Staff Writer
Sunday, January 28, 1996 Page: 1A
CONYNGHAM TWP. — For more than four decades, they have been nearly
inseparable, the man and the river.
Like an old married couple, they have loved and labored, fought and
forgiven.
“I was born by the river, I live by the river, and I’ll die by the river,”
Al Slominski, 48, has always said of his beloved Susquehanna.
But this time, the river might have pushed the man too far.
Inside the dusty-pink house in Mocanaqua where Slominski grew up and raised
a family of his own, the walls are buckling, the cupboards are cracking, the
floors are caked with dirt that no amount of soap can wash away.
The Mocanaqua man stares at the river like a lover betrayed. “This is the
devastation,” he says.
But outside, the river — now contained within its banks — just rushes by,
seemingly unaffected by the destruction it has caused.
For Slominski and possibly thousands of other Pennsylvanians, the damage
from last weekend’s flooding is too much, too painful to ignore.
The cul-de-sac at River Street and Pulaski Circle is beautiful in summer
with lush green lawns and towering trees overlooking the river. But now, six
weeks into winter, the neighborhood is dirty brown and dismal.
Outside Al and Carol Slominski’s home, a once-blue couch and love seat sit
in mud. Yards and yards of soaked carpet are draped across mud. A dead bass
lies stuck in the mud.
Up and down River Street, the ruined, mud-covered belongings of families
wait in piles for the truck that will haul them away.
Carol Slominski, 42, steps through the rubbish and gazes at the home her
family moved into about five years ago. The Slominskis inherited the house
from his parents.
“Before that, we lived in a trailer in back,” she says, adding with a wry
smile, “I was so grateful to finally have a house. Now I’m hoping that someone
will buy it.”
But she is doubtful. “Who would want it now?”
The Slominskis have flood insurance, but like many homeowners, they can’t
yet put a dollar figure on the damage. Al Slominski finds it difficult just to
describe the destruction.
“You look and you say, `Holy mackerel,’ ” he says, pausing to rub his tired
eyes. He asks of no one in particular, “Where do I start? Where do I go? What
should I do?”
But he already knows the answers. This isn’t his first quarrel with the
Susquehanna.
“The plan of attack is: Get home as soon as possible and get the mud out,”
he says. “If you don’t get it out now, you never will.”
So last week, the Slominskis shoveled mud and ripped the carpet out of
their home’s first floor, where flood waters reached the top of the kitchen
counter.
Carol Slominski scrubbed and scrubbed the now-rippled floor, but dirt
remained and dust swirled in the air.
“You should have seen the refrigerator,” she says. “It was full of water
and the eggs were floating in it.”
The Slominskis began moving most of their belongings to the second floor
that Friday evening more than a week ago when flood sirens sounded and
evacuations were ordered.
“The water was just coming up over the banks,” she says. “We were working
so fast. We didn’t know where to put everything.”
About midnight, the river reached the street in front of their home. Carol
and son Scott, 11, left to stay with his sister, Stacie Riaubia, 21, who lives
with her husband in Huntington Mills.
Al Slominski refused to leave. “I stuck it out here until whatever could be
held out could be held out,” he says. He admits it was a scary experience.
About 3 a.m., he was awakened by a crash as pressure from rising water made
the house contract and forced out a window.
“Chunks of ice were coming around and banging against the house,” he says.
“It all happened so fast.”
With loudspeakers urging people to evacuate, Al Slominski finally left his
home. He doesn’t remember when he and his family came back. The days have all
blurred together.
“We salvaged the best stuff I own, but look at all this,” he says of the
ruined furniture and appliances piled in the yard. Just about everything else
is still stashed in two small upstairs bedrooms, crowding the beds the
Slominskis returned to sleep in.
The family plans to replace what was lost, but will probably buy used
furniture. Carol Slominski works as a nurses aide at Birchwood Nursing Center
in Nanticoke. Her husband is disabled and cannot work.
“We had such a beautiful house,” Carol Slominski says. “We won’t invest
that much money in this house again.”
Meanwhile, they clean, wait and cope with sleepless nights and memories of
how things once were.
“I broke down again this afternoon,” Al Slominski says. “You got to realize
the stress of this.”
And yet, he says, it could have been worse. “I’m lucky to be where I’m at.
What about the people that died?”
And he remembers a more ferocious fight with the river he has loved so
long. “None of this was as bad as 1972,” he says, recalling the destruction of
the Agnes flood. “Nothing could be as bad as that.”
He walks out to the mud pit, once his front yard, and gazes at the friend
he knows so well. The river rolls by as it always has.
We should move, his wife says, but Al Slominski shakes his head.
Once again, the man and the river have fought, and the river has been
forgiven.
Editor’s note:
The Times Leader will continue to report on the Slominskis’ efforts to
recover from the flood.
TIMES LEADER/LEWIS GEYER
Al Slominski, 48, still doesn’t know the cost of the damage to his home
from last weekend’s flooding.
TIMES LEADER/LEWIS GEYER
Conyngham Township employees pick up rubbish and ruined appliances outside
Al Slominski’s home in Mocanaqua.