Yorktown Sees 8 Inches Of Rain; Cleanup, Recovery Continues

YORKTOWN, NY — On Saturday, the town of Yorktown held a grand opening for the long-awaited The Links at Valley Fields Par 3 Golf Course.

By Monday morning, the nine-hole course with a pro shop and a restaurant on Route 6 in Shrub Oak was completely flooded.

At some point, more than 8 inches of rain fell in a six-hour period, according to town Supervisor Tom Diana.

Water was flowing over bridges, roads were washed out, parks were under water, trees and wires were blocking streets and a sinkhole opened up behind Town Hall.

“No matter where you went, it was high tide,” Diana told Patch on Wednesday. “There’s no other way to explain it.”

But the water is thankfully receding.

“It’s all very surreal,” he said. “It’s amazing how fast it came and now it’s gone.”

As an example, Diana said that the concessioners at the Par 3 Golf Course were already back up and running.

“Their pro shop had 4 feet of water in it, but the main building was OK,” he said.

The water that took over the golf course was receding at a rate of about 18 inches per hour.

But the town still has work to do, Diana said.

“We have to analyze what we have to repair, what to clean up, what to inspect,” he said, adding that copious notes are being kept on the problems at hand.

Yorktown residents, Diana said, should be contacting their insurance companies, keeping records and taking pictures.

He strongly recommends residents take a video walking tour to document everything that was damaged.

Diana said he’s hoping President Biden will get the Federal Emergency Management Agency involved because that will help Yorktown residents above and beyond insurance.

All of that is just for the present crisis.

What the future contains is anybody’s guess, but undoubtedly there will be other heavy rainstorms, and Yorktown needs to prepare — somehow — for them.

Diana said that the town is going to have to do a comprehensive analysis of the arteries that stormwater rush through.

He said it may take bringing in the United States Army Corps of Engineers to figure out how to more efficiently deal with huge amounts of stormwater.

“That’s a heavy lift,” Diana said. “You can’t just go into a stream with a bulldozer anymore.”