LODI, N.Y. — Residents of the Seneca County communities devastated by last week's flash floods will need more than the rest of the summer to clean up what's been left behind.

Mary Mehaffey's will need all the help she can get.

The Houston, Texas resident summers in her family cottage on Old Lake Road in Lodi. She was asleep last Tuesday when more than a foot of water and mud came down the hillside behind her home and swept away most of what wasn't tied down. 

The water even moved some things that were. Like her garage, which ended up capsized in Seneca Lake, 50 feet from her front door.

"The home's been in my family since 1900. My kids don't want me to lose. I hope I don't," Mehaffey said, speaking while taping packing boxes to hold the soaked and mud-covered remains of her belongings. 

A neighbor came to her moments later with a sign that hung from her garage. Newly painted and no worse for the wear, it had been recovered from the tide that keeps splashing the east side of the lake with debris, timber and a lot of things not normally seen in the water.

"This makes my day," MeHaffey said. 

"Some people think this is a five-block area. This goes for miles," Trooper Mark O'Donnell of the New York State Police said. "We've been using drones and other craft to see the damage. It does down the lake." 

Marine units from the State Police, state Department of Environmental Conservation and Seneca County continued to skim the lake for debris. One tug boat, working hard in the wind and rain of Tuesday, reported its engine caught fire working to drag the debris to shore.

Volunteers from far and wide have joined the effort to bag belongings destroyed in the floods. MaryAnn Wingler of Romulus tossed bags of trash from one home to her son, who relayed them into a 30-foot garbage hopper.

"It's total destruction for some of these people," Wingler said. "It's very sad and it breaks my heart. But so many are helping. We're just trying to do our part."