Main and Wall Street
“We lived at 7 Commerce Street on the second floor, overlooking the Norwalk Boat Club. There was a parking lot behind the building, right on the river, where we usually parked our car. The night of the flood it was raining so bad that I said, ‘I gotta park up on the street.’
At 2 o’clock our neighbor came banging on our door. He said, ‘we gotta get out of the building. Buildings are coming down around us.’ We looked across and saw the buildings gone on Main and Wall. So we got dressed right away and went downstairs. We all got in my car – my neighbor, his wife, his mother (who was a very large woman), their baby and the four of us.”
Bernard Scalisi, 2005
“If it weren’t for the railroad tunnel to relieve all the pressure, the Wall Street Bridge would have gone down. As it was, the bridge was only a little damaged.
Paul Harris, 2005
Norwalk Fire Department
“When we left the building, the police told us to go to the Armory. It was so awful; so pitch black in there – they had emergency lights, but it was dark. And there were rats. It was a huge buildings. There were lots of people there, but I don’t even remember talking to them – I was so scared. People were sleeping on chairs. I had two babies and was pregnant with a third. When we left the apartment (I am so embarrassed to even say! It was so crazy) – you would think that with two babies, I would have grabbed diapers or bottles. I took my curlers! Everyone laughs at me when when I tell that story.
We later learned that three people died and heard how people lost their homes, but at the time we didn’t realize how close we could have been to being in that kind of situation. Afterwards I had nightmares about it. I saw water gushing – always water gushing, because that was the last thing I saw before they told us to get out of the building.”
Barbara Scalisi, 2005