Rain, flooding hit some Upper Valley towns much harder than others
Published: 07-13-2023 9:56 PM |
It’s a mark of how arbitrary severe weather can be that this week’s heavy rain treated Chelsea and Thetford — just a couple towns apart — so differently.
In Chelsea, the First Branch of the White River cut into Route 110, and a sign south of Chelsea village says the highway is closed to through traffic. Floodwaters scoured the earth from around one village home’s basement, and a residential care home had to evacuate its 21 residents. The damage was worse than what Tropical Storm Irene meted out when it roared through in 2011.
“The Irene water level was much lower than what we experienced in this event,” Tracy Simon, the town’s emergency management director, said Wednesday morning.
In Thetford, all of the town roads are now passable, though some are still down to one lane. Only two homes have reported flooded basements, though there might be others, Mariah Whitcomb, Thetford’s emergency management director, said Wednesday.
“Thetford certainly fared better than many other areas of the state in this storm,” she said.
Between Thetford and Chelsea, a stretch of Route 113 in Vershire is closed between Vershire Center Road and Darling Road. A bridge was wiped out by flooding around 6:30 p.m., Monday evening.
State transportation officials have told Vershire Fire Chief Steve Ward that they plan to put up a temporary bridge. A private contractor hired by the state was at work on the bridge site on Wednesday.
A nearby resident reported hearing the bridge crack, Ward said. He was called out and drove across it, then turned around and came back and the bridge was slumping into the raging water.
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“I had been across it about five minutes before that,” Ward said. The flooding “sounded like thunder, only louder.”
The missing bridge complicates emergency services for Vershire. Upper Valley Ambulance, in Fairlee, covers the southeastern end of town, with First Branch Ambulance of Chelsea covering the northwest, said Pat Barnes, a firefighter and member of the town FAST Squad who was looking at the gap in the roadway yesterday with his wife, Deb.
“This is the one state route that goes through town,” he said. Roads through Chelsea to Gifford Memorial Hospital are open now, but during the storm it wasn’t clear how ambulances would get there from Vershire, Barnes said.
Otherwise, Vershire had only one other closed road, Eastman Crossroad, which had washed out in a downpour last week, Ward said. Monday’s rain worsened matters, and the road is still closed, he said.
Emergency officials urged motorists to pay heed to signs warning that roads are closed.
“Just be safe,” Whitcomb said. “Our signs for road closures are there for their safety.”
With road repair and helping residents ongoing, Chelsea officials offered a reminder that a boil water order remains in effect for people on the municipal water service. The same is true of many villages with municipal water systems, included Royalton and Woodstock.
“The state issued a blanket order,” Simon said. She urged Chelsea residents to keep checking the town website for updates.
Simon, who has had a long career in law enforcement and emergency management, said people who have had property damaged in the flooding should call VT 211, which would put them on a list of people state and federal emergency management officials will contact.
In the meantime, town residents are looking in on people who might need help. Some older residents might have a family member shop for them or pick up medications, and if that family member can’t get there, “we can facilitate that sort of thing,” Simon said.
The two worst flooding events in recent memory, Irene and this week (call it what you will), weren’t the worst everywhere. The rainfall of July 1, 2017, affected 75% of Thetford’s town roads, Whitcomb said. “We got lucky this time,” she said.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.