The skies opened around dinnertime Saturday evening along an 11-mile corridor stretching from Newtown to New Hope in Bucks County.
For two hours rain fell like a waterfall turning a normally peaceful, barely noticed creek into a raging rapid that swept away nearly a dozen cars and more than a dozen people in what officials described as a “new benchmark” for flash flooding in Upper Makefield.
Upper Makefield resident Peter Apuzzo lives about a mile from the command center and witnessed the storm.
“We had nothing short of a monsoon for an hour,” he said. “It was the heaviest rain storm I have seen in a very, very long time.”
What we know so far:Three dead, four missing in Bucks County. Here’s what we know about the Delaware River flooding
As of Sunday morning, a fourth victim was recovered one mile south of Taylorsville Road in Houghs Creek. The names of the dead will not be released until families are notified.
The county has set up a temporary morgue inside Upper Makefield Fire Company Station 71.
Search and rescue efforts resumed early Sunday in an area that spans about 2-1/2 miles from the Delaware River back up to Houghs Creek, for at least three missing people, a 9-month-old boy and his 2-year-old sister, and a 63-year-old woman officials said.
Police were able to contact family of the missing by tracking them down through license plates of cars that were swept away, Upper Makefield Fire Chief Tim Brewer said at a media update Sunday morning at the Upper Makefield Township Building.
“One family has been severely affected, and that’s all we can say at this time,” Brewer said.
At least two of the confirmed dead were swept away after they got out of their vehicles, Brewer said. Another victim was in the vehicle. Brewer believes that the drivers were caught by surprise.
“We do not think anybody drove into it,” he said. “Within minutes the road went from passiable to having four to five feet of raging water.”
Fire crews responding to a utility pole that was struck by lightning happened to be in the area as the heavy rains started and were able to start rescuing trapped vehicles, three of which firefighters saw swept away in the fast moving water, Brewer said.
Eleven vehicles were trapped in the creek, he added.
“As a witness to that, in my 44 years, I’ve never seen anything like it. When the water came up, it came up pretty quickly,” Brewer said. “We want the families of those who are lost to know they are in our hearts and we will work tirelessly until we locate the loved ones. We cannot imagine how difficult it has been at this time.”
More than 150 rescuers searched for people from the Delaware River to the flood site along Washington Crossing Road Saturday night. Eight people were rescued from cars and two from Houghs Creek, Brewer said. Sunday morning 100 rescuers were in the field, Brewer said.
Crews from Upper Makefield Fire Department, along with public works employees certified in water rescue, were seen searching the area surrounding a section of Houghs Creek near Gilbert Street and River Road.
“Search and rescue are physically walking the creek banks where accessible,” Brewer said. “This is a very inaccessible area to the township. There are steep cliffs on both sides and in some areas there is no direct access to the creek … so we are physically walking. “We are treating this as a rescue, but we are fairly certain we are in a recovery mode at this time,” he said.
Also hampering recovery efforts is the location of Houghs Creek, which runs along the 1000 block of Washington Crossing Road between Stonebridge Crossing and Wrightstown Roads, a short distance from Washington Crossing United Methodist Church, where the county emergency command station was set up.
“This creek is in a very awkward area, it’s a very remote, hard to access area,” Brewer said, adding that it made difficult removing the deceased and injured, he said. Two people rescued from the creek had to be hauled out with rope systems.
The vehicles of the three confirmed dead were located in the creek, Brewer said. One victim’s vehicle was found approximately one-and-half miles from where it went into the creek.
The swollen creek swallowed vehicles along that stretch of Washington Crossing Road after about six inches of rain dropped within less than an hour, Brewer said. As the recovery phase continues, crews have been dedicated to monitoring rainfall and water level.
“Some of the search teams are going to be in a very peculiar area where they’re going to be trapped if they’re not careful,” Brewer said. “It is dangerous down there. There is debris we have to catalogue. But at this point, we have to wait and see what the rescue teams can find.”
More heavy rain and flash flooding in the Philadelphia region is possible Sunday, according to the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Flooding had already been reported early Sunday in northern New Jersey and Northampton County, meteorologist Eric Hoeflich said Sunday morning.
Roads throughout Upper Makefield remain unpassable and closed with Bucks County park rangers standing guard to keep drivers away.
Roads closed in Upper Makefield, Lower Makefield and Solebury due to storm
As of Sunday morning, Taylorsville Road from Route 532 to Route 295 is closed, River Road by Francisco’s restaurant is closed, and River Road between Route 532 and Mt. Eyre Road is closed.
“If you are driving in and around the township, please be careful as there is a lot of debris on the roadways,” Newtown Township Police said.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation also announced these closures Saturday night:
An incident command center remains in operation at Washington Crossing United Methodist Church on Wrightstown Road, near the site the worst flooding. The American Red Cross has set up an assistance station at the Yardley-Makefield Fire Co. for flooding victims.
Summer storm slams Washington Crossing, Bucks County
A heavy burst of rain slammed into Bucks County around 5 p.m. Saturday, flooding roads and swelling river banks along the Delaware River and small creeks.
Meteorologist Joe DeSilva of the National Weather Service said upward of six inches of rain fell over about two hours Saturday evening. He called the event “training” — when an area gets repeated rain over a short time.
Saturday’s torrential downpours focused tightly on the corridor between Newtown and New Hope and as far west as Jamison and continued into Mercer County, New Jersey, Hoeflich said. The ground, already saturated from recent rains, could not take the deluge leading to overrunning of normally small creeks, Hoeflich said.
As the rain fell, creeks and inlets flooded onto nearby roads, pushing cars off the roadway.
Yardley resident Nick Primola said he was in the area just prior to the storm.
“I think a lot of people were just going about their day. No one was expecting the little creeks to be so violent.”
He said along Taylorsville Road both sides of the road collapsed where the creek runs.
“Usually it’s a nice little serene creek, and now it is a violent waterway coming down.”He said he saw a car flipped upside down and five or six cars just strewn across the road.
“It turned into an absolute muddy river”
The water reached about 3 to 4 inches high on the roads in front of his home on Taylorsville Road just off Washington Crossing Road on Saturday night, Tim King said on Sunday. His house backups to the Delaware Canal.
“It turned into an absolute muddy river,” King said. “It just kept rising and rising. It was really frightening.”
Barry Bogarde, a highway foreman for Bucks County, said he was taking pictures Sunday for Harrisburg to assess road damage in order to decide on needed repairs and corrections.
Bogarde said the damage was the worst along Taylorsville Road and Washington Crossing Road, which experienced structural damage along with stone and mudslides impacting the roadway.
“The rain came down at such a heavy rate that it’ll just sweep anything that’s in the way out of the way,” Bogarde said. “The power of this stuff’s just amazing.”
Bucks County Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick said his office was in contact with the rescue teams and urged anyone seeking assistance to contact his office at 215-579-8102.
“We pray for those we’ve lost, and we remain in vigorous search mode for those who are missing,” Fitzpatrick added.
At Washington Crossing United Methodist Church volunteers were caring for victims and providing shelter.
Family pastor Shari Bonet described a scene Saturday night that she called “heartbreaking,” where people sat waiting for word on their missing family members — missing wives, missing children.
“This one guy I was praying with had been on the phone with his wife when her car got stuck, and she said the water was getting too high and she needed to get out. That was the last he heard from her. They found her phone with the car, but she was still missing,” Bonet said.
Others, she said, were flood survivors seeking refuge after abandoning their cars and wading through the high waters to safety.
“They came in and were soaked. We gave them coffee, dry clothes and blankets,” Bonet said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
