On Saturday night the rains in Brattleboro fell ceaselessly. What at first seemed like just a heavy rainstorm quickly produced flash flooding that damaged basements and washed out roads in parts of town. The worst damage: A 5-foot-high stone culvert gave out, taking a chunk of Hinesburg Road and a car with it.
At about 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Brattleboro police, fire and public works departments began responding to calls about flooded basements.
Joshua Carnes, an engineer tech with the Brattleboro Public Works Department, said about a dozen roads had to be closed temporarily because of the flooding. A town highway crew started work Saturday evening to clear the roads, and by 4 p.m. Sunday all roads had been reopened except for Hinesburg Road, where the worst of the damage occurred.
Brattleboro Public Works Director Steve Barrett said that on Saturday evening, as the rain grew heavy, a car was passing over a 5-foot-high culvert that ran under Hinesburg Road into the Broad Brook. The people in the car told officials they saw water on the road and got out of the car to check it out. Moments later, the culvert gave out beneath the wheels, sending the car toppling into the brook. Nobody was injured.
Barrett said that the culvert was built in the 1800s to allow water to pass underneath the road and prevent flooding. “It did its job well for many years but just couldn’t take these new rainstorms,” he said.
Those rainstorms have sent more debris than usual gushing downstream, and when the debris clogs culverts, it can cause their collapse.
“Luckily, now there is some science behind sizing there,” Barrett said. “We’re hopeful anything new we put in will be large enough.”
A new culvert in the same spot would need to be about double the size of the one that collapsed to withstand similar storms, Barrett said.
Most of the Brattleboro damage occurred on gravel back roads on the west and east sides of town. Barrett said it will take months to completely repair the damage. He estimated Brattleboro incurred about $200,000 worth of damage, the vast majority of that for the culvert. He hopes the town government can receive assistance from the state government to help pay for the repairs.
“This wasn’t as bad as Irene,” Barrett said, referring to the tropical storm that caused millions of dollars in damage in 2011, “but was bad enough.”
