Binghamton Susquehanna Flooding Part 2

Next I headed up through campus to drop off some stuff. I get on to campus and I see the most people outside since the first weekend, you know, helping out and talking about what's going on. Oh wait never mind, they are playing Frisbee and basketball and yelling at passerby "WOOOO classes are canceled brahhhh yeaaa!" After talking to a few people, its safe to say the vast majority of people who live on campus have absolutely no clue what is going on. Like I said, if you just look around the living communities on campus, you would think its a beautiful day. All of these people genuinely are completely ignorant of the outside world which I feel just confirms all that I have complained about college kids in the past.
I went into the nature preserve to see how flooded the marsh pond was. The entire lower basin was a swamp, but pictures didn't really capture the scope so I didn't take any. But one positive that came out of it was OH look the autumn olives are in season!

Next I went to Stair Park just outside the SE corner of campus. This is the same park I went polar bear swimming in. Some of my friends have been telling me to take them here the last few weeks and I have been holding off because in the fall, the water fall is barely a trickle.
LOL.

Next I went down Vestal parkway towards downtown Binghamton. I was trying to get to confluence park where the two rivers meet in the heart of downtown, cause I knew that was probably the center of all the flooding.

This used to be a parking lot.

You could get barely out of sight of the university before the flooding became evident.

Vestal Parkway, just past university plaza (1)

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View from Old Vestal Rd (1)

More people draining their basements

Fields at MacArthur Elementary (2)

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Notice the amount of dry land around the doors 2

What I found about now was that the water levels were still rising. Viewing all of this, I was under the impression that it had reached it's worst this morning and was dropping. But no, as makes sense, all of the rain from the hills surrounding Binghamton was draining down into the river, meaning that even around noon it was still rising. I don't remember where I heard this, but some point in downtown was at 23 feet, and was expected to rise to 25 by 7 tonite. The flood line is 13 feet.
But it was definitely rising. As mentioned in the caption, pay attention to the water lines at MacArthur. That picture was from 1230.

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The three above pictures are from the intersection of Vestal and Park Ave. About 1200 feet away from the river. This is as close to downtown as you can get from this side. There were quite a few people trapped in this region, and there were multiple boats going through houses getting people out. The water came in here very fast, just over the course of the last two hours apparently. By the end of the night, another block or so would be under water.

At some point down here it struck me how much the scene looked like your stereotypical disaster movie or something. This whole time, there were helicopters passing by every 5 minutes, both civilian press and military. Later in the night the governor would survey the damage from the air. The president would declare Binghamton along with countless other areas a federal disaster area. And it definitely deserved that distinction. Troopers, and paramedics were all over the place. All over the city, people were milling around aimlessly, displaced from their homes. Everyone watching the waters rise ever more.
Despite the grim circumstances, many of the people I saw handled it beautifully. They accepted the fact that there is nothing you can do in this situation. One man set up a lawn chair in the single patch of open grass on his lawn and cracked open a beer. The ability of people to cope is pretty amazing.

Here is the elementary school on the way back towards campus at 105:

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This next picture is not mine, I found it on facebook and do not know who the original author was. It shows the school a few hours later still:

vestal parkway (1)

This was dry on the way down this morning

I headed back towards Bing to try to get to the other side of the river via the 201 bridge again. I stopped for a few minutes to get closer to the Vestal Parkway flooding. In the five minutes I was there the water went up another foot.
Here is the map for this portion: