Six weeks after flooding caused heavy damage at a camp in Yates County for kids with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, that facility is ready to open up on Monday. Camp Good Days and Special Times had to push back the opening date a bit, but now they are ready to open up this coming Monday in Branchport.
The camp’s founder, Gary Mervis, is amazed by all the work and donations that have happened since the flooding to get this camp ready.
“Overall, if somebody would have told me six weeks ago that we would be ready to open up this next week I would have told you to go back to bed, because the devastation was so overwhelming.”
Mervis says it was not only the financial donations that helped, but the hundreds of volunteers who helped clean up the camp.
He says the camp is really important to the kids who have gone through some rigorous treatment for their disease.
“They get a chance to be a kid again and they get a chance to do it with probably the only people in the world who can really understand what it’s like to be them and that’s other children who are dealing with the same thing.”
Mervis estimates about a half-million dollars in damage from the flooding. He says they are still putting the finishing touches on some of the reconstruction.
