A man narrowly escaped drowning this morning, after being swept off a makeshift foot bridge and into a creek on Watson Hollow Road in West Shokan, near the intersection with Private Road 3.
Neighbor Martha Frankel, who made the call to 911, said that she warned the man not to try crossing the bridge, which was already submerged.
"I don't know what made him decide to do it, he got halfway across, and there was water up to his knees, and he went down on all fours," she said. "As soon as he did I called 911."
Frankel said her neighbor washed about 100 feet downstream and then managed to get to the creek bank, where she helped him out.
"I think he hit a tree, and he pulled himself out," she said. "I threw my arms around him and pulled him onto land. He was in complete shock."
Frankel said that she and several other neighbors -- including the man who fell into the creek -- were now trapped behind the rising creek. Frankel, who has been an outspoken critic of the town of Olive's response to the Irene and Lee flooding, says that the situation could have been prevented if the town had been more proactive about removing downed trees from the creek after the floods.
"My bridge got washed out because trees hit it. The trees should have been taken out," she said. "Exactly what I told them was going to happen, happened. We said this to them: 'The bridges are going to get washed out. Get loggers out there. We'll figure out how to pay for them later.'"
Frankel said that the Olive fire department had offered to attempt a water rescue of her and her neighbors, but that they said it would be risky, and she declined.
She said that her neighbor was lucky to be alive.
"For some reason [Town of Olive officials] don't want to admit that we're in trouble here. I don't know what's going to wake them up."
10:55am: We saw the tweet below from Daily Freeman managing editor Tony Adamis, and made a few phone calls:
A spokesperson for Ulster County Emergency Services said that a call had come in at 9:56 am.
"We got a call for a man that was in the water," he said. "They're out now."
Tom Planz of the Olive Fire Department said that the department had responded to the call, and that a mobile life unit requested from Kingston had been cancelled. He did not know if there had been any injuries.
Planz said there was a private bridge in the area that had been destroyed by previous flooding, and that workers had been in the area rebuilding it.
Rain that fell overnight had swollen local creeks, he said.
"I haven't been up there in the last couple days, but all the streams down here [in Olivebridge] are picking up," he said.
Ulster County Emergency Services said that the Olive Fire Department, Olive First Aid, the Ulster Sheriff's Office Dive Team, the Ulster Hose Dive Team, the Olive Police Department, New York State Police, and the New York City DEP responded to the incident.
Update, 11:45am: A previous version of this story, written before we spoke with eyewitness Martha Frankel, indicated that the man had been rescued. It seems he rescued himself without help from emergency first responders. The headline has been corrected.
Update, 4:45pm: The stranded residents have been evacuated. We have posted a followup story.
