READING — Becky Charbonneau left her home in Reading around 3 p.m. on Monday and headed to White River Junction for her daughter’s gymnastic class.
Two hours later, the home had flooded.
“Someone sent us a picture of our mailbox with water rushing around it,” Charbonneau recalled Tuesday morning. “That’s how I knew our house was underwater.”
Charbonneau didn’t live in Vermont when Tropical Storm Irene devastated the state in 2011, she said, and she figured her home would be safe.
“We weren’t very worried,” she said.
On Route 106 in the village of Felchville, the north branch of the Black River jumped its banks sometime around 5 p.m. Monday, according to Reading Fire Chief Gary Vittum. He’d been standing up the street and, three minutes later, everything changed.
“This happened fast,” he said.
One of Reading’s fire trucks was stranded on the opposite side of the bridge, useless. The department planned to drive it around Ascutney and into town the long way to begin pumping water out of the flooded homes.
Though the Route 106 bridge buckled in parts as the water overtook it, not all was lost. Flower boxes along guardrails still bloomed pink.
Martha Cowan, 77, lives just a few houses uphill from the bridge. Her home, she said, was spared.
As she assessed a damaged home just downstream of the bridge, she gestured inside. Muck boots sat dirty on the stairs. The door was gone. So, too, was the front walkway.
“The chandelier is still on,” Cowan said, shaking her head. “That’s just wild. That’s just wild.”
