WATERBURY — Twelve years ago, Jeremy Ayers escaped his family’s home on Elm Street in swirling muddy water after it was inundated during Tropical Storm Irene. His 94-year-old grandfather, Gleason Ayers, who had survived the Great Flood of 1927 by crawling out a second-floor window on this street, clung to his arm as they navigated the flood waters during that terrifying stormy night.
On Tuesday morning, Jeremy Ayers stood at the end of Elm Street peering down toward his house and pottery studio. Once again, his home was surrounded by the waters of the nearby Winooski River. The stately structure was built in 1892 by Orlo Ayers, a local wheelwright and businessman. It had survived the Great Flood of 1927, Irene, and now this.
Waterbury took a hard hit on Monday and Tuesday but was not devastated. Town Manager Tom Leitz estimates that 40 houses were flooded, along with a half-dozen businesses. Swiftwater rescue teams from Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts carried out four rescues throughout the community overnight on Monday. Sixteen people sought shelter Monday night at a local church.
Jeremy Ayers’ wife, Georgia, hopped into a canoe and floated toward their home. His sister-in-law used a snow shovel as a canoe paddle. They paddled past a white Chevy Suburban that was marooned in water in front of the Craft Beer Cellar. A column on the corner of the building marked the highwater line for the 1927 flood, at the middle of the second-floor window. The water line for Tropical Storm Irene was halfway up the first-floor window. This storm’s highwater line was about two feet off the sidewalk.
“We came down at 6:30 this morning to see that the basement was full of water but the first floor was clear,” said Ayers, watching the canoe drift down the street. He was nervous, noting that the water was slowly rising.
In Waterbury, when epic rains fall, “hoping for the best” is no longer an option. The day before the storm, Ayers and his friends frantically cleared out his basement, first floor and pottery studio. By the time the flood waters arrived, all that remained below the waterline was some firewood.
“Last time we were totally unprepared,” he said of Irene. “We saved nothing and walked out through chest-deep water. This time, we saved everything on the first floor that we could.”
Still, Ayers peered numbly at the lake that is his street.
“The first couple days after a disaster, you’re kind of in fight-or-flight mode. You’re not really feeling very emotionally connected to it,” he said. “The dip emotionally will come in a few days. But for right now we’re just seeing what we need to do to keep the house in good shape.”
A clutch of Waterbury residents and town officials stood at the corner of Elm Street and Main Street in front of Prohibition Pig, a popular Waterbury restaurant and brewery. Among them was Bill Shepeluk, who retired in December after 34 years as town manager. He was lauded for his steady hand in managing the town’s recovery following the devastation of Irene.
Waterbury rose from soggy ruins in 2011 to become a thriving destination for foodies, craft beer aficionados and outdoor enthusiasts. The town’s main traffic light at Stowe Street is ringed by six restaurants and some 100 varieties of craft beer on tap within 100 feet.
Shepeluk said that no town recovers alone. “It will take a community to do this,” he said, recalling the thousands of volunteers who came to dig out Waterbury’s residents in 2011. “You’ve got to breathe. It’s going to take time, and people can’t expect that it’s just going to be resolved.”
“Once the water goes down, things begin to look normal pretty quickly,” Shepeluk continued. “But for the people who have been impacted, it takes a long time. It takes a lot of energy, and they’re going to need a lot of assistance from people who weren’t impacted directly.”
By Tuesday afternoon, over 200 volunteers had signed up to volunteer using a form on the town website. Public works teams from Burlington and St. Albans were arriving to help pump water and clean up.
Prohibition Pig opened shortly after Tropical Storm Irene flooded the Alchemist pub and brewery, which occupied the same building. ProPig owner Eric Warnstedt now owns Hen of the Wood, which recently relocated across the street. By Tuesday morning, the basements of both restaurants were flooded but their main dining rooms were spared. Warnstedt expects that Hen of the Wood will reopen soon, but ProPig lost its brewing equipment, walk-in refrigerators and prep cooking kitchen. It will be closed for the foreseeable future.
He itemized the challenges that his businesses have survived, including flood, fire and plague.
“Locusts are next,” Warnstedt chuckled.
“It’s sad, but it is what it is,” he shrugged. “We have people with a lot worse problems around here. This is just a business. We will get it figured out. It’s gonna take some time. But it really is just one foot in front of the other.”
Remarkably, the State Office Complex in Waterbury, formerly the Vermont State Hospital, came through the storm largely unscathed. In 2011, the complex was badly damaged and was rebuilt as a flood-resilient campus. Buildings were removed to allow flood water to disperse, tunnels were filled in, earth removed and a new front entrance was elevated.
Tuesday morning, flood waters ringed the complex but stopped well short of the buildings. It was proof-of-concept that flood-resilient design works. In addition, Main Street in Waterbury was recently rebuilt with oversized storm sewers. They appear to have worked to minimize the areas of deep standing water.
“We did avoid a repeat of Irene,” said Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury. He said that building with resilience in mind “has helped out a great deal and will probably have to be enhanced moving forward.”
Waterbury still has a long road to recovery ahead. Gleason Ayers, the Waterbury family patriarch who died three months after Irene, left his grandson Jeremy with advice for how to face adversity.
“It’s the simplest kind of advice you can imagine,” recounted Ayers. “Don’t try and solve the whole problem. Just fix the things that you can fix today. One day at a time, one bird at a time, and then it’ll all add up. All we can do is just do the best we can do today. Then tomorrow will be tomorrow.”
