100 year flood in Berks County (Reading, Wilkes-Barre: house, live, move)

[billybobs]

looking for the year the 100-year flood took out the bridge near Gibralter, PA in Berks County. believe it may have been April 1972 due to hurricane Agnes.

[ki0eh]

Mod should probably move this to general PA forum, Gibraltar is east of Reading.

[2nd trick op]

The term "100-year flood" has been misused, because while I suspect that it's based mostly upon the amount of rainfall received. the effects can be distorted, mostly by development which diverts a lot of that water before it can sink into the ground.

I grew up in, and later returned to the North Branch (Susquehanna) Valley which took the heaviest damages from Hurricane Agnes, particularly around Wilkes-Barre. Agnes followed a extremely we spring, followed by a knockout punch that delivered another foot of rainfall in late June; water levels in the Susquehanna itself did not return to normal levels until late summer.

Those Wyoming Valley residents who could moved, along with most of the commerce and other attractions, to higher ground, and the dikes and flood-protection measures were fortified. Unfortunately, this just diverted a lot of the burden downstream. Bloomsburg has seen four floods with water levels as high as Agnes since that time, But only Hurricane Ivan caused serious damage over a wider area.

I'm fairly sure that only Agnes (which some experts have called a 300-year flood) was the culprit. The link below is from the Pottstown Mercury; Pottstown is about fifteen miles downstream (southeast) from Reading., and the river involved is the Schuylkill.


Memories of Agnes are still vivid

[Jeanie Beanie]

I remember the Agnes flood well. My parents' house was 1/2 mile from the Gibraltar bridge over the Schuylkill River and amazingly, the flood moved the metal superstructure bridge downstream! Everyone came out to look at the lack of bridge when the river went down, and we sure had years to look at it after that because it took quite a while to rebuild (at a slightly different spot downstream). Agnes may have been a 100 year flood or a 300 year flood, but whichever - it was by far the most destructive flood of my lifetime here in Berks County.