Area swamped, causing road closures, destruction, outages, water line break
By Tom Ayres, Senior Staff Writer
A bridge taken out and a sizable section of Route 100 collapsed in Plymouth.
Three favorite local eateries and food purveyors — the White Cottage Snack Bar, the Woodstock Farmers Market, and Simon Pearce Restaurant and glassblowers — once again swamped with swirling waters from the Ottauquechee River, with a nearby portion of Route 4 between Westerdale Road and Knapp Drive near the Lincoln Covered Bridge in West Woodstock closed indefinitely due to flood damage.
As the late New York Yankees Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, a beloved mangler of the English language, was known to say in one of his muddled but strangely sensible “Yogi-sms,” it was “déjà vu all over again” throughout the Upper Valley Sunday evening through Tuesday morning as the worst floods since Tropical Storm Irene in August of 2011 swept through the region.
By most accounts, the flooding and damage was not as wrathful as during the fabled storm Irene. But continuing the baseball analogy, people throughout the area faced a tough contest earlier this week — and the game is now in extra innings as communities from Quechee to Plymouth and Reading to Woodstock, Hartland, and West Windsor rally to recover and rebuild.
Al Poirier knows the story all too well. The longtime emergency response director for Plymouth was at the first responder helm in that town 12 years ago when Irene struck hard. And he was there again this week, seeing to the rapidly emerging needs of his community, neighbors, and friends.
“Our first take on the damage is that it’s not as extensive as Irene. It’s devastating, but at a lower level,” Poirier said Tuesday afternoon. “We were more prepared this time. We had a plan the day before when the [National] Weather Service was projecting an inch and a half of rain. We thought we could take that on with no problem and agreed to reconvene Monday morning. We knew what we needed to do. Well, unfortunately, weather reports waver in their predictions,” the veteran emergency response leader noted. Plymouth, in fact, was deluged with nine inches of rain Sunday and Monday, likely the largest total rainfall in the state.
“It didn’t work out the way we planned, although we were not caught with our pants down. We would have felt better if we all could have been at Town Hall coordinating everything, but most of us got stranded at home, as I did. In the end, it all worked out mostly as we had planned,” Poirier commented. “We had plenty of gravel on hand. We had food, we had supplies, and we had the radios we needed. We had more training since Irene — and all in all, it went well.”
Woodstock Police Chief Robbie Blish offered similar thoughts in a phone conversation early Tuesday afternoon. Slated to retire today, Thursday, July 13, Blish bookended his 12 years of service as police chief by responding to the ravages of Irene in 2011 and of the intense flooding that wracked Woodstock once again this past week.
“We were more proactive in terms of evacuating,” Blish offered. “We got the Riverside Trailer Park out early, first thing in the morning. Then we notified all the houses along River Street, just waking them up because the water was already pretty high at that point. We urged them to be ready to go and to keep an eye on it. We encouraged all residents of low-lying areas to leave and almost all of them did,” the Woodstock chief continued.
“We had to do a water rescue up on Cox District Road, which got washed out by Cabot Road,” Blish added. The Swift Water Rescue Team from the Hartford Fire Department – one of 11 in the state, up from just four during Irene 12 years ago – assisted in that effort, with a man, woman, and two dogs plucked from their floodwater-surrounded home and floated to safety by the skilled rescuers.
“Everybody that we evacuated from different areas that didn’t have a place to go, we brought them here for temporary shelter at the station and then we found rooms for them at The Shire hotel, so we were able to get places for people to stay,” Blish said. “Everything is opened back up in terms of residences and right now we’re just waiting for the water to come back on,” the chief concluded, referencing the fact that much of Woodstock Village is without potable water due to a suspected break in a Woodstock Aqueduct Company line that is not expected to be remedied until Friday at the earliest.
River Road near the Bridgewater General Store in Bridgewater Corners was the setting for a swift water rescue by the Hartford Fire Department team early Monday morning. Bridgewater Emergency Response Director Josh Maxham and Fire Chief Ed Earle responded to the scene and called out the Hartford rescue crew at approximately 6:30 a.m. on Monday.
“I got there first,” Maxham said while helping a work crew pump out a neighbor’s basement Tuesday afternoon. “I realized we weren’t going to be able to get to them and immediately called our dispatcher, who called for the swift water rescue crew.” Maxham then swapped places with Earle as the Bridgewater first responder at the log cabin site.
“They tried to deploy once off of River Road,” Earle said of the specialized rescue team. “But the current was just too much. So we had to bushwhack in from the back side of the house and use a chainsaw to drop in behind the log cabin. As soon as we got the boat in the water, it took less than five minutes to get to the house, load them in the boat, get them back to shore, and they were done.” Earle said he offered the couple, who were also rescued along with their dog, emergency shelter in the town, but the unidentified man and woman declined, saying they had another place to stay in the area. “They were gone just like that and we never saw them again,” Earle noted.
Elsewhere in Bridgewater, noted businesses, including those in the Bridgewater Mill near the Woodstock line, did not fare well as the most recent flood waters raged. “The Pottery and Mill were flooded today,” master potter Miranda Thomas reported on her Facebook page late Monday morning. “We are still unable to get down off our hill and access damages. All the back roads are washed out. The river is still raging. We will keep you posted and the good news is that everyone is safe. Thank you to our community and first responders for keeping us all safe and for keeping us abreast of the situation. Our hearts go out to our neighbors, friends, and fellow businesses who are in the same boat as us. Heartbreaking.”
Further east in Woodstock along Route 4, the nearby impacted businesses that Thomas referenced included the White Cottage Snack Bar and the Woodstock Farmers Market. Posting telling photographs to social media of appliances and supplies afloat in the kitchen and throughout the restaurant, White Cottage owner John Hurley opined on Monday that “the snack bar is probably done for the summer.” In a day-after message Tuesday evening, Hurley wrote, “Lots of damage and cleanup will be tough, but it could have been worse. My biggest need at this point is fill for the parking block. Probably need a hundred loads of fill, so if anybody is looking to dump some I will gladly accept it.”
Just down the road from the White Cottage, the Woodstock Farmer’s Market was suffering through similar woes. “As you know, our Woodstock store was hit by torrential rainfall and flooding that began in the early hours on Monday and continued until nightfall,” the store posted to Facebook around noon on Tuesday. Although the store fared better this time around than after Irene, we still have major cleanup and repair ahead of us… We will update you as soon as we have more information as we assess the situation and put together a reopening plan. As has been our experience during other challenging times in our 30-plus-year history, our incredible community is what pulls us through.”
Another iconic Upper Valley business — the Simon Pearce glass factory in Quechee — was also damaged by a torrent of water pouring over the spillway immediately adjacent to the Pearce property. “Thank you to everyone who has reached out about our Flagship,” the company said in a statement Monday morning. We are very grateful our employees are safe and we are keeping a watchful eye on the rising waters. As of now, we can share [that] our mill has been breached — the glass-making furnace, hydro facility, and prep kitchen are inundated by the flooding waters. Our mill will be closed tomorrow as we assess the damage and keep you posted on how we are doing. Our community is resilient. We will find a way forward.”
At Billings Farm & Museum in Woodstock on Tuesday, there was a heartwarming story to report. While the site weathered significant damages to its hayfields, walking path, and powerplant, farm staff were able to put old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity to keep the fabled herd of Jersey cows and other animals watered throughout the emergency, despite not having any potable water available via Woodstock Aqueduct.
“There is currently no water from the town,” senior administrative staff said in an update to farm and museum employees Tuesday afternoon. “Luckily, as we know, some industrious folks in 1900 laid gravity-fed pipes from the Pogue to the site, which we use today in our gardens and which was also used historically to water the cows. [Farm Manager] Phil Ranney and [his assistant] Robert have been using that water to fill troughs and provide drinking water to all the animals. They do always say history repeats itself! They have also been able to hook up to that water for milking, so all the cows have been milked.”
The next steps in the flood recovery process for Upper Valley communities were still evolving at press time. Plymouth Selectperson Jay Kullman said Tuesday that the selectboard was calling a special meeting for that evening to assess preliminary reports of damage town-wide to determine a path forward. In a manager’s report to the Woodstock Village Trustees at their regular meeting on Tuesday night, Municipal Manager Eric Duffy said, “It’s a very different report than I planned a few days ago. So as everyone knows, we’re dealing with the fallout of the storm. Route 4 is still closed all the way to Killington and we’re hoping to have it open soon. The police, fire, EMTs, and emergency services are working hard to open as many roads as possible to help citizens and keep everyone safe.
“With that said,” Duffy continued, “we’re asking residents and businesses to kind of prioritize your needs. Everyone is working hard, so please think about the difference between a tree down in your backyard and a tree that’s on a wire or that is blocking a road so that we are sending our people out to areas where they can have the most impact as soon as possible.”
Contacted by Standard staff Tuesday afternoon and evening, elected officials and emergency responders throughout the Upper Valley offered sentiments about the recovery similar to those of Kullman and Duffy. In a press release issued Tuesday afternoon, Bridgewater Town Clerk Nancy Robinson said “ Bridgewater was severely impacted by the rainstorms during the past weekend, Friday-to-Monday storms. Many town roads and bridges were damaged and will need to either be repaired or replaced in the coming days to months. At this time more than a dozen roads and at least four bridges were impacted.
“The highway department is assessing the damage and repairs began Tuesday morning. Emergency crews have been assisting by checking on residents and roads,” the Bridgewater statement continued. “If you need assistance, please contact the town office or fire department. Please be aware that road crews are working to repair roads and bridges as expeditiously as possible. This work will take several days, weeks, and maybe months. Please be patient and considerate of the workers.”
Contributions to this article were made by Standard Correspondent Aaron Rubin.