CEO, Frost Valley YMCA, Claryville, Sullivan County
As Tropical Storm Irene poured down on Claryville, Biscuit Brook began to flood the Frost Valley YMCA. The river washed out roads on either side of the camp's 6,000-acre campus. Fields became rising lakes and fish swam over cement walkways.
Nearly 150 people were staying at the camp, 40 of them children visiting from Manhattan, and they all needed to be moved from the flood's path. Jerry Huncosky, the Frost Valley YMCA's live-in president and CEO, took charge of getting everyone to higher ground.
After making sure students and staff were safe, Huncosky went to his office. Looking out his window, he noticed something peculiar about a wood and stone cabin outside.
“The building was white and I couldn’t understand why, then I realized the wall was gone and I was staring into the building,” he said.
As he watched, there was a loud crack, and another wall of the building crumbled into the river. Bunk beds tumbled into the rapids as the structure lost its grip to the ground.
"The building somersaulted into the river,” Huncosky said. The collapsing building was just one of Huncosky's problems. More than 50 horses on the property were housed in stables that were flooding out. Huncosky cut the gates and let the horses find their way to higher ground.
“There were horses everywhere, including in my front yard,” he said.
The YMCA was completely cut off from the outside world. So were their neighbors on Oliverea Road. So Huncosky and YMCA staff invited them over. About 40 people accepted, and for about a week, the Frost Valley YMCA provided showers, food and electricity to those who needed them.
“It was just the way people ought to treat each other,” Huncosky said. “Be neighbors.”
With over $1.4 million dollars in damages and no insurance, Huncosky hopes to raise the money to fix the camp through donations. Frost Valley has already raised $300,000 and plans to continue fundraising through 2012. A year later, and the clean-up isn't done.
There are bright spots to the YMCA's ordeal, Huncosky said.
“We moved a lot of the debris in the lake to make an island in the middle that the kids will like,” he said. “We’re making the best of a bad situation.”
Text by Francesca Rogo of the SUNY New Paltz journalism program. Photo of Huncosky in his office on the Frost Valley YMCA campus by Christopher Auger-Dominguez.