By HOLLY WAGNER

Herald-Whig Staff Writer

There's a sense of deja vu in Hull, where residents are moving their household goods into trailers so they can take them out of town at a moment's notice.

There's also the worry that if they leave, they may not be allowed to come back.

"They encouraged everyone to leave after flood in '93," said Bethany Guggenheim as she bagged cookies at the Red Cross food headquarters. "Now, if it floods, I wonder if the ... government will let them return."

Guggenheim, a Pittsfield resident, grew up in Hull. She tries to hide her emotions as she talks about how the 1993 flood knocked her parents' home off its foundation. They were not allowed to rebuild, so they left the farm that had been in her family for generations.

Hull has barely recovered from the devastation of the '93 flood. At 500 residents before the flood, the population had just returned to 475, Western School District Superintendent Rodger Hannel said.

Every home left standing had to be rebuilt from the studs out, and some owners chose not to. New faces replaced the familiar ones. The School District had to consolidate.

Hannel pointed to the line about 5 feet high that runs around the sheet metal walls of the gym in Western Elementary School. It marks the height reached by the floodwaters. Outside is the new playground bought with donations from other schools after the '93 flood.

The classrooms echo with emptiness. Every book and desk, the 7,258 books in the library, the kitchen stove and freezer, have been carted outside to be piled on to trailers and buses and driven to high ground if the need arises.

"It will certainly be a lot easier just to unpack it and put it back," Hannel said. "It took a year to get back into the school after the flood."

Large trailers are parked in front yards and along streets as families cart out their belongings. There has been no official evacuation order, but Hull residents are "river people" and the weekend frees them for a chore that's got to be done.

Lena Robins will share a trailer with another family. She plans to park it until she either has to move it or can unpack it. At about $100 a month rental for the trailer, "it's worth it," she said.

Mary Shirley's sister's family came to help with her "move" from the family home. In 1993, she put most of her belonging upstairs, but this time, she doesn't want to chance it.

Downtown, a crew of students who had been working on the archeological dig at the New Philadelphia site were helping to empty the Kinderhook Township Library and Hull Museum into a waiting semi trailer. At the school, volunteers filled bags of sand.

"It's good to see that we still have the same spirit among the people in fighting this flood," Hannel said. "There's just not as many people."

This flood also differs in that the water rose so fast, Jeff Sneider said. "In '93, it seemed like we were fighting it for months." Residents were warned about this flood only four days ago. "And it is supposed to crest and start going down right away," he said.

Fifteen years ago, librarian Dixie Ward spent the days before the flood helping out on the levee. This year, she is volunteering in town and being nine miles from the river has made her feel less motivated about moving her belongings out of harm's way.

"It's so up in the air. In my moments of despair I think I won't be back. ... But I don't leave lightly," she said, referring to being surrounded by friends and relatives. "It's a treasure you don't find elsewhere."

-- hwagner@whig.com/221-3374