Students hit four-foot hole coming home from school

Warwick — It looked like just a puddle on a day when the roads were filled with puddles. What a few Warwick Valley High School students found out was that beneath that seemingly harmless puddle of water was actually a hole about four feet deep. The good news was that no one was hurt physically, but the three students were shaken up quite a bit, as well as their parents. Gianna Fratto drove to school on Monday, like she does every day. The 18-year-old senior at Warwick Valley High School had her brother, Frankie, and friend Amanda Brasier with her. Fratto took her time driving to school after the two-hour delay set by the district. She arrived without incident. The drive home, though, was a different story. “The road was there on the way to school this morning,” said Fratto, referring to Cascade Road just after the turn from Brady. But after the high school’s 10:15 dismissal, it wasn’t. Instead Fratto, who said she thought she was driving through a puddle, felt her white Chevy Blazer bounce sideways and turn on its side. “Water came pouring in,” said Frankie, a 10th grader who was sitting in the back passenger seat of his sister’s car. “I jumped to the seat behind the driver” to get away from the water. With the Blazer now lying on the passenger side, Brasier, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, was basically strapped into a seat that was filling with water. She unbuckled and got into the driver’s seat with Gianna. Another group of high school students was passing by. They came as close to the car as they could and helped pull the two young women into their car. Frankie couldn’t be pulled by them. He has a broken arm from a fall about a month ago. So they couldn’t pull him by his arm. Instead, with the water rising in the car, he climbed out and stood on the roof for about 10 minutes. A pick-up truck came by and Frankie was able to jump into it. “I was going so slow,” said Gianna. “I learned about driving in different conditions. I’ve been driving for two years now but this was unbelievable.” Gianna and Frankie’s mom, Laura Vreeland, said she usually makes the call herself about whether to send her kids to school or not. “Usually I make the call myself,” said Vreeland. “They had the two-hour delay and I thought how could it be different in two hours, but figured I’d send them. I have a feeling part of the road had broken off. It was a mess. No one should have been on those roads. Dammit, it was a bad call by the district today.”