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Picking Up the Pieces
The flash flood that turned Albert Gomalka’s neighborhood into a deadly, diseased, putrid-smelling, mud-covered landfill seemed like the type of catastrophe that strikes faraway countries.
But this was Bound Brook, N.J., population 11,000, middle-class America. Or it had been before Hurricane Floyd turned its fierce rains on the eastern seaboard last September.
Gomalka, a New Jersey state park superintendent represented by CWA Local 1037, remembers it in vivid detail: The first floor of his house filling with water in just 15 minutes. His family scrambling to safety upstairs. Ruined cars floating down the street. The deafening racket from rescue boats and helicopters. Hundreds of spotlights that made the midnight sky look like high noon.
It was even worse when the waters receded the next morning. Two of Gomalka’s elderly neighbors had drowned. Pets died. Furniture, clothes, appliances and keepsakes — notably Gomalka’s 1.5 million baseball cards — were destroyed. The stench of garbage, sewage and rotting animal carcases was sickening. Bleeding, crying people ill with tetanus and other ailments filled a shelter. Armed National Guard officers cordoned off the town.
“It was like a war zone,” Gomalka said.
Four months later, Gomalka, 48, is still cleaning and repairing his home and yard. He has huge bills from electricians and plumbers. He’s filled out several lifetimes’ worth of paperwork for a small amount of federal aid. He’s been bullied by surly insurance agents who seemed to enjoy spelling out what his house, car and flood policies wouldn’t cover.
In spite of it all, Gomalka feels blessed. He, his wife and their three sons, ages 2, 4 and 9, weren’t hurt. Family in nearby communities gave them shelter. The Red Cross gave them meals. And CWA’s national headquarters gave them a check for $1,500, the maximum available from CWA’s Disaster Relief Fund.
“When I found out, I almost dropped. I said, ‘Wow, will that help.’”
Gomalka got the news from his shop steward, John Keator, who handed over the check at a meeting of park superintendents, all union members. “I think the moment I got to present the check to him was the happiest moment of my union volunteerism,” Keator said. “We both got choked up.”
In addition to the national’s donation, local CWA members chipped in another $1,300 out of their own pockets. One union colleague brought the family two loads of furniture.
Gomalka, overwhelmed by destruction and debt, had contacted the union himself to ask about disaster relief. Because the local unit had several members affected by Hurricane Floyd, Keator said the executive board decided to make a $5,000 donation to the Red Cross, which was helping all victims.
Gomalka said it was appropriate, praising the Red Cross for providing hot food, coffee and cleaning supplies in the neighborhood for a month as residents began to dig through the foul mess.
“You just have to start, inch by inch, hauling everything out,” he said, describing the scene. “There weren’t even garbage bags. All the stores were sold out. There were piles of junk 40 feet high in the street.”
The piles included Gomalka’s massive baseball card collection, which he’d stored in his cellar. He started saving cards when he was 3 years old and said Sports Collectors’ Bible had named his collection one of the “300 greatest” in the world. He planned to help finance his boys’ college education with some of the cards and open a collector’s store for his retirement. But he’s managed to be philosophical about the loss.
“God let me collect baseball cards for 45 years,” he said. “Now I’m giving them back to Him.”
Gomalka knew the collection wouldn’t be covered in the event of a flood, but he never expected that to be a problem. His house is on an incline, nearly a mile from the Raritan River. Bound Brook has flood warnings five or 10 times a year, he said, but the problem is downtown. In his neighborhood “we’d never had even a few inches of water, let alone a flood.”
He urges people to know exactly what their insurance policies will and won’t cover, and cautioned that emergencies declared “national disasters” give insurance companies all sorts of ways to wiggle out of their obligations. He got $221 from his homeowner’s policy and $5,000 from the flood policy. His mortgage required the policy, which cost him up to $1,000 a year.
He is enormously thankful for the help from CWA and individual members. “I can’t begin to express my gratitude for the support and caring from my fellow brothers and sisters in the union,” he said. “They’re helping us get back to normal living.”
But this was Bound Brook, N.J., population 11,000, middle-class America. Or it had been before Hurricane Floyd turned its fierce rains on the eastern seaboard last September.
Gomalka, a New Jersey state park superintendent represented by CWA Local 1037, remembers it in vivid detail: The first floor of his house filling with water in just 15 minutes. His family scrambling to safety upstairs. Ruined cars floating down the street. The deafening racket from rescue boats and helicopters. Hundreds of spotlights that made the midnight sky look like high noon.
It was even worse when the waters receded the next morning. Two of Gomalka’s elderly neighbors had drowned. Pets died. Furniture, clothes, appliances and keepsakes — notably Gomalka’s 1.5 million baseball cards — were destroyed. The stench of garbage, sewage and rotting animal carcases was sickening. Bleeding, crying people ill with tetanus and other ailments filled a shelter. Armed National Guard officers cordoned off the town.
“It was like a war zone,” Gomalka said.
Four months later, Gomalka, 48, is still cleaning and repairing his home and yard. He has huge bills from electricians and plumbers. He’s filled out several lifetimes’ worth of paperwork for a small amount of federal aid. He’s been bullied by surly insurance agents who seemed to enjoy spelling out what his house, car and flood policies wouldn’t cover.
In spite of it all, Gomalka feels blessed. He, his wife and their three sons, ages 2, 4 and 9, weren’t hurt. Family in nearby communities gave them shelter. The Red Cross gave them meals. And CWA’s national headquarters gave them a check for $1,500, the maximum available from CWA’s Disaster Relief Fund.
“When I found out, I almost dropped. I said, ‘Wow, will that help.’”
Gomalka got the news from his shop steward, John Keator, who handed over the check at a meeting of park superintendents, all union members. “I think the moment I got to present the check to him was the happiest moment of my union volunteerism,” Keator said. “We both got choked up.”
In addition to the national’s donation, local CWA members chipped in another $1,300 out of their own pockets. One union colleague brought the family two loads of furniture.
Gomalka, overwhelmed by destruction and debt, had contacted the union himself to ask about disaster relief. Because the local unit had several members affected by Hurricane Floyd, Keator said the executive board decided to make a $5,000 donation to the Red Cross, which was helping all victims.
Gomalka said it was appropriate, praising the Red Cross for providing hot food, coffee and cleaning supplies in the neighborhood for a month as residents began to dig through the foul mess.
“You just have to start, inch by inch, hauling everything out,” he said, describing the scene. “There weren’t even garbage bags. All the stores were sold out. There were piles of junk 40 feet high in the street.”
The piles included Gomalka’s massive baseball card collection, which he’d stored in his cellar. He started saving cards when he was 3 years old and said Sports Collectors’ Bible had named his collection one of the “300 greatest” in the world. He planned to help finance his boys’ college education with some of the cards and open a collector’s store for his retirement. But he’s managed to be philosophical about the loss.
“God let me collect baseball cards for 45 years,” he said. “Now I’m giving them back to Him.”
Gomalka knew the collection wouldn’t be covered in the event of a flood, but he never expected that to be a problem. His house is on an incline, nearly a mile from the Raritan River. Bound Brook has flood warnings five or 10 times a year, he said, but the problem is downtown. In his neighborhood “we’d never had even a few inches of water, let alone a flood.”
He urges people to know exactly what their insurance policies will and won’t cover, and cautioned that emergencies declared “national disasters” give insurance companies all sorts of ways to wiggle out of their obligations. He got $221 from his homeowner’s policy and $5,000 from the flood policy. His mortgage required the policy, which cost him up to $1,000 a year.
He is enormously thankful for the help from CWA and individual members. “I can’t begin to express my gratitude for the support and caring from my fellow brothers and sisters in the union,” he said. “They’re helping us get back to normal living.”