WESTON — In the village center of Weston, floods arrived in the early morning hours, heavily damaging roads and buildings when the nearby West River spilled over its banks, cutting off the village for several hours in the morning.
Josh Allison, chief of the Weston Volunteer Fire Department, said around 2:45 a.m., firefighters saw the rising water behind their station and knew they had to move all their trucks out of the station.
By 5 a.m., there was about 5 feet of water inside the fire station. By mid-morning, the flood waters around Weston village had receded. Inside the ruined station, a layer of mud covered the floor. Allison said the fire department building has been through floods in 1973, during Tropical Storm Irene, and now today.
“This is to the disaster level. This is a complete loss here,” Allison said.
About a quarter mile down the road at the Weston village green, debris was caught in fences and piles of gravel dotted the roads. The bridge at the beginning of Lawrence Hill Road was washed out, the West River rushing underneath it. Fire alarms at The Little School sounded.
Nearby, Geoff Brown walked around, assessing the damage to his house, which is immediately adjacent to the destroyed Lawrence Hill Road bridge.
“This is now the most significant flood in Weston’s history,” said Brown, who works at the nearby Vermont Country Store.
While the multiple feet of water had momentarily receded as of 11 a.m., Brown said he worried for what was still to come with more rain in the forecast.
