The heavy rain began in the central Adirondacks on Monday night. Sam Keller was at his home in Long Lake. He said he didn’t take the storm very seriously at first, but the rain wouldn’t let up.
“It was a steady, tropical-like rain- heavy," said Keller. "I kept looking at the radar and it was just hovering over us.”
Keller is a landscaper. His house is on a higher elevation, so wasn’t at risk of flooding, but many places in Long Lake are at lower elevations, closer to the lake and streams. Keller kept monitoring the rain through Monday into early Tuesday.
“It went through the night," said Keller. "I was up every night on the hour, on the hour and I said, ‘We’re going to expect some damage.’”
Paula O’Brien-Piraino said her first call of a flooded basement came after midnight. O’Brien-Piraino is a firefighter in Long Lake and says that call was the first of many.
“While preparing to respond to that, we were dispatched to another, a second basement flooding so we had to divide our troops- divide and conquer.”
While the emergency responders in Long Lake pumped out the second basement they got a third call- the main road into Long Lake, Route 30, was flooding right in front of O’Brien-Piraino’s home and business, the Long Lake Diner and Owl’s Head Pub.
“So divide and conquer again," said O’Brien-Piraino.
Her husband worked on managing the flooding at their property while O’Brien-Piraino stayed focused on the community's flood response. Early Tuesday morning, the spillway dam on Jennings Pond was breached, releasing water into the community and into Long Lake.
Many people in Long Lake were up all night, helping neighbors, feeding emergency responders, and checking in on friends and family.
Trisha Hosley began making breakfast sandwiches for emergency responders in Long Lake around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday. She and her husband manage The Park, a burger and ice cream shop in the center of town.
"It has been beyond amazing to see the number of people that jumped into action and stepped up to help wherever they could," said Hosley. "Long Lake is a remarkable community and I feel so lucky to live here."
O’Brien-Piraino said Long Lake also got a lot of help on Tuesday from nearby communities and state agencies.
“As a small, rural community, we sure have some pretty great people here that can come together. Just knowing who to call, that’s when it counts, when you know your community and everybody just jumps in.”
There’s a lot of work ahead for Long Lake. A lot of homes were flooded and some people were evacuated. The nearby communities of Newcomb and Blue Mountain Lake were also hit hard by the flooding on Monday night.
Lisa Johnson manages Hamilton County’s Department of Public Works. She said some of the worst damage was on Route 28 to Newcomb, so a portion of it was closed to traffic as of Tuesday night. Photos show the road fully torn apart by the force of the flood.
“I mean it was beautiful pavement, it had recently been done, it looked great, and [now] it’s like ribbon candy, a long thing that’s been scrunched up in waves," said Johnson.
That kind of damage takes time to repair. She’s urging folks to just avoid the area entirely while crews work to repair the roads around Newcomb, Blue Mountain Lake and Long Lake.
“Really at this point, if you are expecting to need to get from point A to point B going through Long Lake, you shouldn't even try, even if the road seems to be open, you’re not going to get past that intersection for a little bit.”
Patience is key right now. This is usually the busiest time of year for Adirondack tourist towns like Long Lake, so patience can be hard to come by both for visitors and business owners like Paula O’Brien-Piraino. Still, she says she’s hopeful.
“I’m trying not to get a little nervous about that, but I have faith that we’ll be alright.”
County and state road crews will continue to assess the damage and make repairs in the coming days and weeks.