TBW Daily Diary

Did not see any of my pictures or my "memory" in today's Patriot-News recounting stories from Agnes, but here is the piece that was on PennLive yesterday . . . My building on Green Street in downtown Harrisburg did not lose any of its utilities during the crisis. ... Displaced friends and their families who were not so lucky came to take warm baths, cook several meals and watch television in the hope of seeing their own distressed neighborhoods. I spent a great deal of time on the telephone searching upstream for people’s relatives — hopefully to find that they were safe and in shelter. I recall that the volunteers in the Wilkes-Barre area where particularly efficient in keeping records of who was evacuated and to where . . . Mayor Harold Swenson showed commendable leadership, but it was Ron Drake, a WHP radio announcer, who was the hero of the hour. Drake was on the air almost non-stop for days throughout the flooding with emergency bulletins and instructions. We relied on his every word to get us through . . .