New Hartford Recovering from Dual Disasters

By Beth Malicki, Anchor/Reporter

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By Daren Sukhram

Story Created: Jun 8, 2009 at 9:35 PM CST

Story Updated: Jun 8, 2009 at 9:35 PM CST

NEW HARTFORD - For one town, the flood was the second of a one-two punch from Mother Nature.

First, a tornado slammed New Hartford killing two people. Just two weeks later, heavy rains sent Beaver Creek out of its banks. The flood waters reached almost every structure in the Butler County town of around 600.

The back-to-back disasters chased some from town, but most people stayed.

Now, the town's recovery is ongoing. A weekend clean-up revealed how far that recovery has come, and how far it has left to go.

Many New Hartford residents are back in their homes and businesses are again open. A year ago some feared the town would be wiped off the map.

Now, it's a different story.

"We're continuing to rebuild houses and lives and see what we can get done," said New Hartford Mayor John Anderson.

Mayor Anderson is also the President of the local Lions club. This past weekend the Lions sponsored this debris drop off site. Many in New Hartford still putting their homes back together took advantage of the opportunity.

"It means a lot, I think a lot of people are showing and working and showing progress," said flood victim Brad Swarts.

New Hartford suffered two major disasters in less than three weeks' time, but the people here say they see a bright future for their community.

"We've lost some businesses, we'd like to get some back, rebuild the town and maybe expand, we're not thinking about shutting down, we're growing," said Anderson.

Flood victim Brad Swarts says there's one thing he'd like to see return to the site of this debris collection.

"It'd be nice to have a convenience store and where we can gather and have coffee."

But even without a convenience store, the people of New Hartford are still coming together to help each other, one year later.

Mayor Anderson says the city is working on a new storm water management system aimed at preventing floods in the future.

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