Editor’s note: Anne Galloway contributed to this report.
Congressman Peter Welch, D-Vt., arrived in Barre City Monday on a tour of the flash flood damage to central Vermont not long after the “crisis de jour,” as Mayor Thom Lauzon put it.
A mudslide on West Patterson Street early Monday morning took out a power pole and a large maple tree. Two nearby residences were inspected and one was evacuated. On Sunday, part of a granite retaining wall gave way and a fracture developed in the bank below Hilltop Avenue. Three residences on Hilltop and four homes at the base of the slope on Kirk Street were evacuated.
It was the latest in what has been a difficult four-day period in Barre, following a Thursday night flash flood that coated most of the downtown in muddy silt and filled basements with floodwater. Lauzon said local emergency management personnel from Williamstown, Bradford and Corinth had pumped water out of 100 residential basements since last Friday.
Lauzon is asking residents to report any sinkholes, soil slumping and fractures on embankments. “We understand false positives, but we have to get ahead of this, and identify problem areas before they become catastrophic,” the mayor said.
Lauzon estimated the damage to public infrastructure at between $1.5 million and $2.5 million. There were no official estimates of the total damage to public property in the region on Monday.
“We’ve got significant infrastructure damage throughout the city,” said Lauzon. “We’re seeing a lot of rippling in the pavement where the story [drain] system was overwhelmed, the water jumped, and it literally rippled the pavement all the way down the street.”
The total cost to private businesses and residences is also unknown at this point.
Welch surveyed flood damage in Montpelier and Barre to both private buildings and public infrastructure. He promised to do what he could, but the federal government’s reach, he said, is limited mostly to the public sector.
“Those are loans not grants, unfortunately,” he said, “but that can help our small businesses that had a lot of basement damage.”
Welch arrived the same day as assessors from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who began looking at damage caused by the flood, Hooper said.
In Montpelier, floodwaters destroyed portions of the roadways on Gallison Hill Road near U-32 High School and Parkway Avenue, but the worst flood damage in the city, Hooper said, was below ground level.
“It’s the basements,” said Hooper. In the parking lot behind Julio’s restaurant in Montpelier, flooding caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage. Hooper said that authorities were still in “emergency mode” on Monday, as they inspected damage and made sure immediate needs were being met.
“We’re hoping for a disaster declaration,” said Hooper.
As of Monday afternoon, President Obama had not yet responded to a disaster declaration request from Gov. Peter Shumlin and a letter of support from Vermont’s congressional delegation.
Private homeowners and business owners will have access to very little federal help, Welch said.
“Where it’s the toughest is for homeowners,” he said. “The federal aid doesn’t help them, and they frequently don’t have any insurance to cover flood damage, so that’s the biggest challenge for the community and for the state.”
