todayskids

Day care flooded by rising waters

By: Bob Bauder and Michael Pound, Times Staff

07/05/2007

Meggan Crumity, left, looks on as an owner of Today'z Kidz Childcare and Activity Center hands her daughter Joshiya Lay, 3, to her friend Candice Moore after flooding closes the day care center Thursday

ALIQUIPPA - Stacey Henry had just gotten most of her clients ready for naptime.

Henry, an owner of Today's Kidz Child Care Center at 385 Franklin Ave., was enjoying the peace on the building's second floor when one of her employees rushed upstairs and said, "Stacey, there's water coming in the front door."

Henry said she rushed downstairs to find that the muddy water that engulfed Franklin Avenue Thursday afternoon was not only coming in the front door, it was coming in from everywhere.

"You didn't really even have time to think about what was happening," she said Thursday evening, after all of the children at the center had been safely returned to their parents. "It was everywhere; it was starting to get piled up inside."

Some of the kids were sleeping on the building's ground floor, so employees formed a chain and started passing children over the rising water to the stairs, and the relative safety of the second floor. Henry said this happened quickly, keeping the children out of danger and out of the water.

"I learned today we have some excellent workers with us," she said. "They knew what exactly to do, even though this was something that none of us would have ever anticipated."

Not long after everyone was safely upstairs, another flood began. Calls from concerned parents who had heard about the flooding and wanted to pick up their children started pouring in, and Henry and the day-care center's employees worked to accommodate everyone they could.

"For a while, the police weren't letting anyone come down this far," Henry said. "But after the water backed down a little bit, some of the parents were able to drive down here, and we did the chain thing again, walking the children out to the cars."

Meggan Crumity was finally reunited with her 3-year-old daughter, Joshiya Lay, nearly four hours after the deluge flooded Aliquippa. Crumity and her best friend, Candice Moore, were working in Robinson Township when they heard about the situation in Aliquippa.

Crumity said they immediately started a frantic ride to Aliquippa.

"The whole way here, there were so many detours," she said. "It took like 20 to 30 minutes extra to get here. I felt there was nothing I could do."

Day-care personnel reassured her that the children had been safety secured on the building's second floor, but Crumity spent several anxious hours waiting for the water to subside.

Day-care co-owner Michael Henry, Stacey Henry's husband, finally waded across knee-high water with Joshiya in his arms, reuniting the little girl with her mother.

"I'm just glad that all the kids are getting out OK," Moore said.

With the work day coming to a close - and what was sure to be more people trying to get through the flood zone to the day-care center's door - Henry got some help from Aliquippa School District. Two school buses parked in front of the center and took the remaining children up to Aliquippa Elementary, which served as the pickup location for the remaining families.

That left the Henrys and the center's employees to consider what happens next. Henry said Today's Kidz will be closed today, but workers will clean through the weekend in hopes of reopening at least a portion of the business on Monday or Tuesday.

"Life goes on, and people still have to go to work," she said. "We understand that, and we'll get reopened as soon as we can."