Updated at 8:19 p.m.
Even as floodwaters substantially receded from the Granite City’s downtown, its mayor, Jake Hemmerick, reported widespread damage and warned people to be vigilant.
“It appears that our system is still taking on a lot of water from uphill and the streams coming down from the higher elevations. It’s ongoing,” he said Tuesday midday. “We’re definitely not in a recovery mode. We’re still very much in a response mode.” With manhole covers washed away in some places, Hemmerick cautioned people from walking through muddy waters.
The police and fire departments, in coordination with swiftwater rescue teams staged by the state, have already conducted dozens of rescue operations, Hemmerick and Joe Aldsworth, the city’s deputy fire chief, reported Tuesday. The Red Cross shelter set up at the Barre Auditorium had welcomed 190 people as of last night, both officials said.
No reported fatalities have been linked to the flooding yet, Aldsworth said, but several injuries were, the worst of which appeared to be a broken leg. Rescue teams were still out and responding to calls as of midday.
“We are currently responding to a lot of trees that are falling on houses. And landslides seem to be the biggest thing right now,” Aldsworth said.
By dinnertime Tuesday, another risk of severe flooding reared its head. Fire engines from Barre City, Barre Town, Montpelier and East Montpelier rushed downtown to a fire located at the rear entrance of 59 North Main Street, a building that houses and is connected to a number of downtown businesses, including the Cornerstone Pub & Kitchen. Aldsworth told VTDigger that the fire was suspected to have ignited from a gas-powered sump pump, though the cause was unconfirmed as of 5 p.m. There is no suspicion of malicious activity, Aldsworth said.
The city is lucky that contractors, who were working to clean up the building Tuesday afternoon, caught the fire early, Aldsworth said. Had the fire spread, the results could have been “very detrimental to the city. They put a lot of money into this building.” He estimated roughly $10,000 in damage to the building, none structural. Tenants who live in second-story apartments in the building are safe, he said.
“We’re very fortunate,”Aldsworth said.
In an interview just several hours earlier on Tuesday, Cornerstone owner Rich McSheffrey had sounded optimistic, despite flooding in his building. “We’ve got about 6 feet of water, standing water, in the basement, which is where we house all of our inventory, our walk-in coolers and everything,” he said at the time, holding a sump-pump hose as water gushed into the parking lot. “So everything down there is gone.”
Even so, he expressed gratitude for the construction crew already at work hauling mud away from the parking lot — and concern for those with fewer resources.
“I feel like it’s Covid all over again, you know? But again, there’s less fortunate people than I,” McSheffrey said. “I’m just hoping that people are saved. We can rebuild all this. We have before. We’ll probably have to do it again.”
Just before 4 o’clock Monday afternoon, it seemed that Barre — Washington County’s largest city — had somehow been spared the worst of this week’s flood damage. But after hours of steady rain, there was a burst of a downpour.
The city’s drainage system — much of it bolstered in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, in hopes of preventing another disaster — was simply overwhelmed, according to City Manager Nicolas Storellicastro. In what felt like a blink of an eye, Barre’s downtown was washed out. Barre’s Main Street resembled a river, with residents kayaking along the city’s main commerce center to check on downtown businesses.
Many of the residents who had to be rescued from their cars — Storellicastro said, “I can’t tell you how many” — were attempting to reach the Barre Auditorium to volunteer or drop off supplies for the Red Cross’s emergency shelter. For hours on Monday, the shelter was unreachable by vehicle, and organizers scrambled to obtain supplies. (Additional food and water was delivered Tuesday morning.)
The Good Samaritan Haven, a local shelter network that evacuated its Barre City and Berlin shelters to the Auditorium, lost its transport van to the floodwaters as it was making one final run, according to shelter officials. The driver and a lone passenger had to abandon the car but made it safely to the Red Cross facility.
The Barre shelter did ultimately see some flooding, according to Rick DeAngelis, Good Sam’s co-executive director, but the basement saw the worst of it and electrical and heating systems were all spared. About 50 people who were living in the shelters are now at the Auditorium, but the plan as of early Tuesday afternoon was to re-open both Good Sam facilities on Wednesday morning.
The van, however, is a total loss, DeAngelis said — and the shelter network’s only vehicle.
“I’m hoping some generous person out there will help us buy another one. Because we use it a lot,” he said.
Joe Edgar, who had been living at Good Sam’s Barre City shelter on Seminary street, told VTDigger Tuesday afternoon that he and fellow residents were initially evacuated to the network’s Berlin shelter and then again evacuated to a local school, which turned out not to have the necessary staff or supplies. That’s when they were finally routed to the Auditorium.
The journey was treacherous — the school bus that was carrying him at one point crashed into some cars, and he recalled watching a truck’s passing wake send floodwaters through the window of a sports car struggling to stay on the road.
“It was an adventure,” he said.
Exhausted from the day’s events and sleepy from his medication, Edgar said he slept soundly through the night. When he awoke, the Red Cross facility was short on supplies, but water, food and coffee soon started arriving.
“When it eventually kicked in, we were really well taken care of,” he said.
Unrelated to the floods, the city has been under a boil-water notice since Monday afternoon. The issue stemmed from prescheduled work being conducted at the city’s water treatment plant. It still had not been lifted as of midday Tuesday.
Local officials and residents estimated that the damage to the city was worse than that of Irene.
Spend any time in Barre, and one is sure to hear of its long-awaited renaissance. Locals have been optimistic, with new businesses opening downtown and young families buying homes in one of the state’s only bastions of semi-affordable real estate. This week’s flooding is a heartbreaking setback, Storellicastro said.
“It’s a gut punch,” he said. “We were right there.”
