Editor’s note: Anne Galloway contributed to this report.
Irene thrashed the Mad River Valley on Sunday. The tropical storm laid waste to hundreds of buildings– houses, businesses, schools, town offices — in Waterbury, Waitsfield, Warren and Moretown. Floodwaters cut open Route 100 in Warren; tore through the Waterbury State Office Complex; and decimated several prominent Vermont businesses, including the Alchemist Pub & Brewery in Waterbury, and the Pitcher Inn and American Flatbread in Waitsfield.
By Tuesday, cleanup efforts were well under way, though it will likely be weeks, if not months, before these four communities return to anything resembling normalcy.
Moretown appeared to sustain the biggest blow.
Rep. Maxine Jo Grad, D-Moretown, said, “We’re one of those island villages” — a community that like more than a dozen communities in central and southern Vermont was surrounded by water.
Two bridges on either side of the cluster of historic buildings on the main road — Route 100B — were out. Nineteen town roads had collapsed sections. The Moretown Mountain Road, a popular throughway between Northfield and Montpelier, is out.
A number of households are without power or water. The town offices are ruined. Sewage backed up into the elementary school and Grad said it is out of commission indefinitely. A classroom in the Harwood Union High School is being used as a temporary daycare for young children in the town. Because of the many gutted local roads, it will be difficult for older students to get to Harwood by bus until at least next week.
Homes and businesses on the Route 2 side of Moretown between Middlesex and Waterbury were hit very badly.
“There are no words,” Grad said. It’s just devastating and heartwrenching. It’s awful. A friend told me she knows of a woman who was swimming in her kitchen, pushing her refrigerator back up on Sunday. That’s how high the water was.”
Grad said she went grocery shopping for 150 people at Mehuron’s Grocery Store in Waitsfield, and they sent her back with 60 free sandwiches for Moretown residents.
Waterbury damage extensive
Kerosene, oil and sewage-laden water swept through Waterbury on Sunday evening, leaving about 100 residences, the town offices, businesses and the state office complex a mucky mess by Monday morning.
The complex houses 1,200 state workers — the largest such facility in Vermont. The 19th-century brick campus with slate roof turrets is now surrounded by a sea of mud. The muck slicked the first floor of the 519,000 square feet of facility, and oil-laden water filled the rabbit warren of tunnels underneath the massive structure.
About 50 Department of Buildings and General Service employees are on the site now working on cleaning up the damage. Floodwaters wiped out the power generators for the facility and the switching system. Michael Obuchowski, commissioner of BGS, said it would take two weeks to get the power going again.
Several of the state’s main IT systems — including for payroll, human services, benefits, the Department of Public Safety and the Agency of Natural Resources — had to be dismantled and are in the process of being reconfigured. By the end of Tuesday, Gov. Peter Shumlin announced that the benefits-processing system was up and running again.
An entire neighborhood behind Main Street in Waterbury (Randall Street) was submerged in water on Sunday.
Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, said more than 100 buildings had been ruined in downtown Waterbury. “Basically, everybody south of Elm Street was hit,” Stevens said. Between Route 2 and Route 100, Snowfire Auto, Juniper’s Fare Restaurant, Super Thin Saws, Artisan Coffee & Tea and Vermont Peanut Butter were all swiped by the Winooski on Sunday. The one bright light? The old railroad station was spared.
On Tuesday, the Harwood girls’ soccer team had formed a flash volunteer mob to deal with the after-effects of the flash flood. The high school students (including two boys), went from building to building to help remove wet, muddy debris from houses and businesses.
The Federated Auto Parts store lost 75 percent of its inventory; One Studio Dance is closing indefinitely (and temporarily at least losing its 400 students); and Arvad’s Grill and Pub is closed until further notice.
The Perkins-Parker funeral home lost a new $73,000 hearse and a van, and the building had to be gutted of carpets, furniture and upholstery. (Guare and Sons in Montpelier and Pruneau-Polli in Barre offered to let Perkins-Parker host funerals at their facilities.)
The Alchemist Pub and Brewery is a “complete loss,” as John Kimmich, the owner, put it — the once-bustling bar now smells of dirt, and the brew tanks in his cellar toppled — but he is determined to re-open by Christmas. “I may sound overly optimistic, but we’re going to push like hell to open again because we’ve seen such an outpouring from the community,” Kimmich said. The flood arrived on the Alchemist’s doorstep the day the business had turned a corner — Kimmich had just manufactured his first cans of a beer he calls “Heddy-Topper” off the line.
American Flatbread slammed in Waitsfield
On Tuesday, about 200 people converged on American Flatbread to help owner George Schenk clean up the headquarters for the pizzeria (which is also a franchise and retail operation), an inn associated with the restaurant and barns. Seven feet of water rushed through the buildings. The floor in the pizza oven area has to be replaced, and as Schenk said, “whatever the water touches it destroys.”
Schenk said the volunteers have saved him tens of thousands of dollars.
“It’s really been an exceptional outpouring of support, and it kind of humbles you,” Schenk said. “It reminds us all we don’t live alone, as much as we might think about living in isolation.”
In Waitsfield, many roads were closed and several areas heavily damaged, according to Town Administrator Valerie Capels. Most heavily hit was the Bridge Street Marketplace area, which Capels described as “hammered.” The Bridge Street Marketplace includes several popular restaurants and retail shopping. These businesses are closed and their future uncertain, Capels said.
The covered bridge in Waitsfield survived the storm but is closed until it can be inspected by a state bridge inspector, according to Capels.
The Fiddlers Green area, home to SunWood Biomass and the Waitsfield Laundromat, also sustained heavy damage.
The storm left Waitsfield isolated on both sides until Tuesday, when the Agency of Transportation reopened Route 100 south of Route 17, which was washed out by Mill Brook.
A number of homes were evacuated, but by mid-day Monday, everyone who had been evacuated had returned, Capels said. She was aware of one family completely stranded in their home.
Warren hires private contractor to help with cleanup
The southern damage has also severely limited access to the neighboring town of Warren; Route 100 is the major artery between the two towns.
In Warren, Route 100 was closed in two locations, and several other roads were down to one lane as road crews worked to make roads passable, according to Warren Town Administrator Cindy Jones.
Jones said the village sustained minor damage, although the Pitcher Inn flooded “dramatically” and is closed. The covered bridge is intact, but because of heavy erosion on one abutment, the covered bridge road is closed.
Warren has hired a private contractor to undertake the bigger projects for which the town is not equipped, Jones said. She estimated that about 25 town employees, including road crews, emergency personnel, the on-call fire department, and herself, were involved in Monday’s clean-up activities.
“We’re not as severe as some towns,” she noted; there were no evacuations in Warren and no shelter was opened. However, road conditions have made travel difficult. “Most people are pretty much staying off the roads, but people who try to go somewhere get to a road-closed sign and have to turn around and find an alternate route,” she said.
Montpelier downtown basements fill, again
In downtown Montpelier, merchants spent Sunday night bracing for what they feared would be a repeat of the May flood that caused considerable damage to many businesses.
Many shops and restaurants were closed on Sunday as business owners mobilized friends and family to move inventory and equipment from basements to higher ground. As evening fell and the river began to rise in earnest, several merchants used Facebook to put out a call for help.
Over the sound of rain on pavement, sump pumps and generators could be heard behind the blocks of businesses.
About a dozen volunteers in rubber boots responded to a call for assistance at the Downstairs at the Savoy, where they worked with owner Terrence Youk to use two sump pumps, a shop vac and old-fashioned hand-bailing to keep up with the water coming in through a drain pipe.
A couple blocks away at Onion River Sports, at least as many volunteers and a half-dozen employees filled the first-floor retail space with bicycles rescued from the shop and storage areas in the basement. At about 11:30 p.m., owner Andrew Brewer sent volunteers home.
Monday morning dawned sunny and bright, with most merchants thankful the damage wasn’t as bad as the May flood, while opening, or preparing to open, for the day. Many noted that the May flood had prepared them to respond to rising waters and that with more time to prepare for Irene, they’d been mostly able to mitigate potential damage.
Capitol Stationers owner Eric Bigglestone noted that he’d gotten a lot of volunteer help quickly, and used the assistance to move inventory off the bottom shelves of the store. “There wasn’t really anything in the basement because we threw it all away last time,” he said.
Bigglestone noted that one difference from the May flood was the regular Facebook and email updates from City Manager Bill Fraser, which he checked on his iPhone. “I found that very useful,” he said.
“Plus, with the [National Weather Service] flood gauge, you don’t have to be at your computer—you can be running around doing stuff,” he said. Bigglestone headed home at about 1 a.m., when “it was obvious the water was going down.” He was back early in the morning, thankful that “we dodged a big bullet.”
A lack of sleep was a common theme among store owners. Next door at Aubuchon Hardware, manager Gary Law went home late but couldn’t sleep from worry. “I came down a little after 5 a.m., and I don’t know who did it—there was no note—but one of the employees came down and ran the sump pump,” he said.
Aubuchon employees spent the weekend moving inventory out of the basement, and Monday morning they were selling shop vacs and other clean-up equipment to a steady stream of customers. At 9:45, Law had to place an order for more sump pumps, having sold out in less than three hours.
At Onion River Sports, which abuts the North Branch of the Winooski River, three industrial-sized sump pumps ran all night to keep most of the water out of the 9,000-square-foot basement, according to owner Andrew Brewer. “It’s not an option for us not to use the basement,” he said, noting that it houses a bike repair shop and significant storage space for bikes, bike racks and skis.
Brewer and the staff decided to move all the bikes upstairs, with the help of about 30 volunteers, but left the other items in the basement, albeit high off the ground. “It was all or nothing, and we took a chance,” he said of leaving the other items downstairs. “We gambled that there would be no big crest.”
“We were well prepared, and we had virtually no damage,” Brewer said. The store sustained losses of about $25,000-$30,000 in the May flood.
Two State Street restaurants, Kismet and Julio’s, once again had their basements filled with water from the sloping 60 State St. parking lot. At noon, both basements were still submerged. Julio’s opened for lunch, but Kismet was unable to open because the dining room was filled with inventory normally stored in the basement.
Owner Crystal Maderia was uncertain when Kismet would reopen. After the May flood, the restaurant was closed for 30 days and sustained about $98,000 of losses. Maderia estimated that expenses from this flood will be significantly less—she estimates about $10,000-$15,000, mostly in lost revenue, cleaning costs and staffing expenses for the cleaning work.
The Savoy Theater and Downstairs screening room also sustained losses after the May flood and are closed temporarily. Monday morning, the heavy whirr of industrial fans and several humidifiers were the soundtrack in the Downstairs screening room at the Savoy Theater. The new furniture—purchased after the May flood—had been moved before the water started rising, and all traces of standing water were gone.
At Positive Pi, four plastic gasoline cans were lined up outside the back door as a sump pump continued to send water into the parking lot. Owner Carlo Rovetto had mobilized a crew of staff and volunteers to move all inventory out of the basement, and the slice shop was filled with stacked cases of soda. Rovetto stayed up all night pumping the basement.
“We only took in 3 feet of water this time; last time it was 7 feet,” he said. “I had three sump pumps going; two seized up, and the exhaust melted on the other at 4 a.m.” He rented three more pumps at 7:30 a.m.
“Overall, we had pretty minor damage,” he said. “I feel better about it than I did last time.” At 3 p.m., the restaurant’s Facebook page announced that the restaurant would open at 6 for dinner service.
