Peggy Fletcher rose to the sound of pounding on her door Monday.
“I woke up at 5 a.m. with the fire department bang bang bang bang at my door,” Fletcher, 76, said. “They said, ‘Madam, you’ve got 5 minutes to get out of here.’”
She grabbed her medication, her clothes and a toothbrush. She had little time to think.
Fletcher leaned out her door and into the arms of a firefighter, fleeing her home in the Black River Mobile Home Court in Ludlow. On piggyback, she headed for shelter at the Ludlow Community Center.
“He was slushing through the water. Lights were flashing. It was like a movie,” Fletcher said.
Ludlow, the Windsor County mountain town home to Okemo Ski Resort, saw some of Vermont’s worst flooding on Monday. With its major arteries impassable, the town became an island.
By midday Tuesday, the mobile home park was an extension of the Black River. Ladders stood outside people’s doors, stairs long since washed away. Fish swam in the puddles between houses. One of the homes had been pushed a hundred yards downstream, now wedged into a tree.
A lone gravestone lay on its side, brought by the river from who knows where.
In the rush to evacuate, Fletcher discovered the mismatched bunch of belongings she’d thrown together. Four tops, just one bottom. She was still wearing the same clothes from Monday, she said.
She’d also not thought to take her car to higher ground. Now it won’t start, and she said she expects it to be a total loss.
Bill Korzon, one of Fletcher’s neighbors, also fled the park for safety at the community center across the street.
He described “clouds of propane” as tanks floated down the Black River, gas hissing along the way. All day, the river raged behind the park, the noise tremendous and overwhelming.
Tropical Storm Irene completely destroyed Korzon’s mobile home, he recalled. A builder, he reconstructed the home himself. He even raised the house 16 inches, just in case. Ludlow was home — he’s taught skiing in the area for decades — and even though the park sat in a flood zone, he didn’t think the same flooding could happen again.
But this storm was even worse, he said.
“I don’t know why they don’t condemn the park, say you can’t build here,” Korzon said. “With the weather and climate changing.”
