HONESDALE, PA — The sidewalk outside of St. John's Church in Honesdale drops off into empty air. A sinkhole cluttered with broken pipes and jagged rubble gapes open in the hillside; a muddy trench shows where the water made its way further into town. 

A torrential storm on Tuesday, May 6 caused this damage, and more in other parts of Honesdale. The extreme flooding and pooling water caused the borough to declare a state of emergency. 

Borough officials say the emergency highlights Honesdale's long standing issues with stormwater management, issues that have so far not been fully addressed. 

"This is the third time this has happened, but this is the worst," Reverend William Langan of St. John's Church told the River Reporter. 

Three years ago, a pipe burst further up on the hill, past the church building itself, damaging the church's parking lot. In 2021, Hurricane Sandy caused the same damage to the church's sidewalk as Tuesday's storm. 

The church has spent $150,000 of its own money to repair these previous damages, said Langan. He's hopeful for some amount of government assistance in recovering from this most recent storm. 

"We don't have another $150,000 to replace this," he said. 

Emergency services closed off the flooded intersection between 4th Street and Main Street on Tuesday, May 6.

Picture from Alert Hook & Ladder Co. #2 - Honesdale Fire Dept. Facebook page: Floodwater falls off the 5th Street pedestrian bridge, with St. John's Church in the background, during the May 6 flooding in Honesdale.

Picture from Alert Hook & Ladder Co. #2 - Honesdale Fire Dept. Facebook page: This image shows the extent of the flooding suffered by Honesdale on Tuesday, May 6.

Picture from Alert Hook & Ladder Co. #2 - Honesdale Fire Dept. Facebook page: A car is shown stranded in the flooded intersection of 4th and Main Streets on Tuesday, May 6.

Previous Next

In comes the calvary 

Emergency management got to work in Honesdale while the rain still fell, blocking off the flooded intersection at 4th and Main Streets and draping caution tape over impacted pedestrian walkways. 

As the waters receded, government gears began to grind, readying a response to the damage. 

Mayor Derek Williams signed a declaration of emergency the morning of Wednesday, May 7 which allows the borough to activate response and recovery planning, Williams said in a post on Facebook. 

The Honesdale Borough Council will meet on Monday, May 12 at 6 p.m. at 958 Main Street, to ratify the emergency declaration and review and take action on proposed emergency work. 

Representative Rob Bresnahan also visited Honesdale following the storm. Borough officials met Bresnahan as well as state Senator Rosemary Brown on Thursday, May 8 to assess the damages and to discuss next steps. 

"We have to look forward to make sure that the residents of Honesdale are secure, that they're not worrying about having their homes and their businesses flooded out from underneath them," said Bresnahan. 

The borough's immediate priority was to mitigate the damage that had already happened and to prepare for the next impending bout of bad weather, said Bresnahan. After that, he added, the borough would need to understand what had happened and make preparations so it wouldn't happen again. 

"This isn't new," said Brown. "This is something that we're dealing with across the state of Pennsylvania, across the country, and we have to make plans for the long term. But right now, it's about mitigation."

State Senator Rosemary Brown, left, Interim Borough Manager Kevin Kundratic, Department of Public Works Director David Nilsen, Representative Rob Bresnahan and Borough Councilor James Cordaro discuss the flooding in Honesdale of Tuesday, May 6.

Representative Rob Bresnahan stands atop the rubble from the Tuesday, May 6 flooding.

Senator Rosemary Brown discusses the flooding in Honesdale of Tuesday, May 6.

Mayor Derek Williams discusses the flooding in Honesdale of Tuesday, May 6.

Representative Rob Bresnahan, left, meets with Reverend William Langan of St. John's Church.

Previous Next

How it happened

The damage to the church property came from aging infrastructure, said interim borough manager Kevin Kundratic. 

Kundratic became interim borough manager 13 months ago, he said. "Within the first two months of me being here, I identified that [the borough] had a huge stormwater problem."

When the pipe burst at the top of the hill, three years ago, a new pipe got put in from there to the church sidewalk, said Kundratic. The pipe burst in Tuesday's storm where the new pipe stopped and the old infrastructure began. 

The borough's aging stormwater infrastructure will need comprehensive work to prevent issues from recurring, as well as improvements to the way it is currently constructed. 

Kundratic says there are parts of the borough where stormwater pipes have been placed under houses or garages, something that "baffled" him to discover. The church parking lot used to be a creek bed before it was filled in and covered over with concrete, something that wouldn't be done under modern day stormwater management practices. 

Mayor Derek Williams said that step one of the borough's response to the storm would be figuring out emergency repairs. Step two would be new comprehensive planning for stormwater management, he said. 

Fragile federal funding

Currently, federal support for the intended multi-layered response to Honesdale's flooding looks to be increasingly tenuous. 

President Donald Trump has pushed to diminish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), saying he was considering "getting rid of" FEMA in January according to AP News and signing an executive order to shift responsibility for emergency management to state and local governments, according to Reuters. 

Programs under FEMA like Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) provide funding for recovery efforts from flooding. Scranton was set to receive around $2.5 million in funding through BRIC for recovery efforts from flooding that occured in September 2023; in April, FEMA announced that it would not disperse the $750 million plannied this year for BRIC grants.

Bresnahan has advocated to keep portions of FEMA intact, writing a letter and introducing legislation to protect FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program.  

Speaking in Honesdale, Bresnahan said he was confident the BRIC program would continue, even if under another name. 

"Building resilient communities is critical," he said. "I grew up in the Wyoming area, and in 2011, I watched my grandparents get four feet of water on their first floor from the Susquehanna River."

When asked about his stance on FEMA, Bresnahan said he has seen the agency's benefits firsthand, as he worked as an electrical contractor who did emergency recovery. 

"There's plenty of great things that FEMA does, and there's a lot of things that happen on a local level and on a state level, but I think there needs to be good communication and good fact finding to make sure that we're being good stewards of taxpayer money," he said.