Crews help folks get to higher ground

Larry Shaffer has been through all this before.

“This is the third time,” Shaffer said. “Back in ’72 with Agnes. Then again in ’96. I think ’96 was even worse than this.”

Perhaps, but Ivan was bad enough.

Shaffer, who lives at the confluence of Penns, Elk and Pine creeks in Coburn, was surrounded by floodwaters that, late Saturday afternoon, were still 3 feet deep.

“We’re OK, but we can’t go anywhere,” said Shaffer, who decided to ride out the flood with his son and two grandsons on the second floor of his home.

Earlier in the day, three other relatives were evacuated by boat from the Shaffer residence to higher — and dryer — ground near the Coburn post office.

“Nobody was hurt or anything. They were just anxious to get out,” said Carey Stover, of Aaronsburg, who offered his services, and his fishing boat, to the Millheim Fire Company.

Stover, his son Matt, and Shaffer’s grandson, Sam Bobb, launched the boat at Long Lane, west of Coburn, and negotiated the raging Penns Creek to the village that, with both Penns Creek Road from the west and Coburn Road from Millheim to the north closed, was essentially isolated.

“It’s pretty messy down there,” Bobb said. “Pap and Gram had 4 inches of water in their kitchen.”

Shaffer’s niece, her husband and their teenage daughter, who came to Coburn on Friday night to help the Shaffers move furniture upstairs, decided it was time to get out late Saturday morning and took a boat ride to safety.

“I guess we got four or five out total,” Stover said.

At least three other Coburn-area residents were evacuated by truck, said Todd Wasson, of the Millheim Fire Company.

Firefighters and fire police responded to one call after another beginning shortly after midnight, when Paradise Road was covered by water and had to be closed.

Later, fire policeman Kevin Lingle said, a woman had to be rescued from a stranded vehicle on Coburn Road and the bridge at Greenbriar Gap Road was closed when the floodwaters, striking the side, began to shake the structure.

“And,” Lingle said, “we’ll be pumping out basements all day.”

But even the fire company needed help to get from Millheim to Coburn to evacuate residents from their flood-threatened homes.

“We couldn’t get through with our truck,” Lingle said, noting the deep water that covered Coburn Road. “We had to wait for the brush truck from Spring Mills.”

While volunteers were helping Coburn-area residents -- including one woman who was pregnant — get to safety, others were watching and marveling as Penns Creek roared before them.

“I’ve lived along here all my life, and I’ve never seen it this high,” said Chris Schriver, 33. “I was just a baby in ’72, but this is the worst I can remember.”

Shaffer, 63, remembered worse -- but even he was getting a little tired of dealing with floods.

“As you’re getting older, this really gets taxing,” he said.

Rich Kerstetter can be reached at 235-3928.