It almost seemed like a tsunami’: Ice jam floods Armstrong County campground, moves trailer

ARMSTRONG COUNTY, Pa. — The co-owners of a local campground are determined to recover after the property was flooded over the weekend.

An ice jam flooded Rivers Edge Campground along the Allegheny River in Armstrong County over the weekend. Campground co-owners, Brian and Tiffanie Hans, tell us that the recovery will likely take months.

“It almost seemed like a tsunami compared to what happened the last time,” they said. “It’s going to be a long spring trying to put everything back together to keep the place operational.”

Rivers Edge Campground sits in the shadow of the Allegheny River Lock and Dam No. 9. Friday night, an ice jam formed several miles downstream, causing the water levels to rise.

“The usual height of the river is 15 feet. When the peak started coming, it was at 39.95 feet,” they said.

The water came on quickly, and the flooding was powerful enough to pick up a trailer.

“There’s one trailer right now, I’m not quite sure with everything piled together, I was trying to assess it on Sunday, and I’m not real sure,” Brian Has said. “There’s one that I wasn’t sure between who owned what, whether there was one missing or not yet.”

Brian and Tiffanie braved the icy water over the weekend to save what they could.

“We were trudging in the water up to our knees in the freezing cold water trying to move stuff,” Tiffanie said. “We didn’t bother with our stuff. We were trying to move our campers’ stuff that was there that we could get to.”

The campground is open from April to October, so no campers were there at the time. But some have shown up to help in any way they can.

“The campground is more than a campground. Everybody in there are friends and family.”

Now grandparents, the Hans have extra motivation to bring the campground back better than before.

“Our two children are 21 and 19, and they’ve grown up there and now we have a granddaughter and we want her to grow up there, so we’ve got to get it cleaned up and get it ready,” they said. “There was a lot of tears shed this weekend, but we’ll get back to where we need to be.”

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