MONTPELIER — As the floodwaters slowly receded from State Street on Tuesday, the roof of a car parked in the middle of an intersection was just barely visible. The car’s owners stood on higher ground nearby. They had hatched a plan to walk to Stowe, a roughly 15-mile hike through the mountains.
Melissa Marcoux, one part of the pair, said they were coming back from New Hampshire on Monday when detour signs started popping up along their route. When they reached State Street, the floodwater “just kind of came out of nowhere,” she said.
They had to crawl out of their car window in order to escape.
“Don’t worry, I locked it,” she noted wryly.
Countless other people stuck in Vermont’s capital, home to some 8,000 people, had their own tales to tell on Tuesday about navigating the storm, from braving torrential rains on Monday to traversing its deluged streets the morning after, when much of the downtown’s first-floor homes and businesses were submerged.
An emergency order closed the area for much of the day and amid surreal scenes of so-called “kayak fairies” paddling the city’s streets to assist strangers in need. Thousands worried about the Wrightsville Dam on the North Branch of the Winooski River, where floodwaters threatened to breach the dam for the first time in its nearly 90-year history. Small business owners suffered devastating damage to their storefronts. And at least a half-dozen households, including one made up of two adults and an infant, needed emergency rescue.
PHOTOS: VTDigger reporters and photographers captured scenes in the flooded capital on Tuesday, as many waited anxiously for news of whether floodwaters would recede
In the case of Marcoux and her partner, locals gave them coffee, along with some dry clothes, and allowed them to sleep in one of the Court Street offices for the night. But she was eager to get home to Bakersfield. “At this point, I just miss my cat,” she said.
Two bikers offered to accompany the couple part of the way up their planned route through Middlesex. They shouldered their packs and started walking.
Elsewhere on Tuesday morning, Steve Melamed watched the floodwaters from the corner of Cedar and School Streets. Describing himself as a “flood refugee” from nearby Middlesex, Melamed had been working on a property he owns in that town until about 6 pm Monday, when he tried to get home to South Middlesex.
“I tried to drive five or six different routes,” he said. “All got washed out. Each way I got stuck.”
He was able to get to Montpelier, where he made plans to stay with friends for a day or two. He said his wife and child were at home, without power, he said, but doing fine.
Mike Doyle said he was concerned about the dam as he stood in front of the School Street guest house his family has owned for 70 years. The water was up to the front steps of the guest house, where six people are renting, all traveling nurses, he said.
He said he knew from photos he has seen that the floodwaters reached roughly the same spot now as they did in the 1927 flood, which was worse than after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
“All of Saint Paul Street, as far as I can see, is a lake, and all the way down School Street,” he observed, “a good one or two or three feet of water.”
It was enough for a kayak and a canoe to navigate — which they did.
As of mid-morning, Doyle said he had two to three feet of water in his basement, and he was worried about his furnace, which he replaced just two years ago. He did not buy flood insurance, because he never thought the waters would rival the 1927 flood.
Business owners, too, were surveying the damage, which in many cases was significant.
Among them was Robert Kasow, co-owner of Bear Pond Books on flooded Main Street. In a parking lot behind the Montpelier Fire Department, he got as close to the bookstore as he could on dry land. He said there was probably water in the store, but he did not know how high the water got inside.
He said he cleared out anything valuable from the basement, but did not have time to get anything in the store more than two feet off the ground.
Patty Joslyn was keeping tabs on the flooding in her store, AWE, on State Street, via a security camera. She said she had time Monday to roll up the wool carpets on the floor. The water came in not from State Street, she said, but through the back end. She thought there may be 6 inches of water in her store, but it was hard to tell by the camera.
Other business owners told the same story Tuesday of having to wait until they can access their businesses to assess the damage.
“It’s just kind of a waiting game to see when they will let us go downtown and have a look at things,” said Shannon Bates, who owns Enna, a restaurant on State Street.
Sarah DeFelice, who owns Bailey Road, a home furnishings, clothing and gift store on Main Street, said she was in a similar situation.
“We can’t even reach the back door because there is so much water,” she said Tuesday afternoon. “We can only hope that we moved enough things high enough.”
Among those rescued in at least a half-dozen emergency efforts in the city were two adults and an infant, who were boated to safety from a dwelling next to Capitol Copy shortly before noon. Afterward, crew membersfrom Colchester Technical Rescue loaded their swift response boat onto a trailer and headed back to their base at the Berlin Fire Department.
One of the rescuers said many people were left on upper floors along Main Street, but he said they were high enough to be safe.
By 3 p.m., the flood waters had begun to recede, leaving the dry spots in the city with a coat of brown sludge. A handful of people waded through the water and one white pickup truck, sporting a dog, drove by.
