CABOT — Harry’s Hardware no longer has a large section of its basement. On Wednesday afternoon, waters from the Winooski River could be seen flowing below where the flooring used to be.
“We got about 6 inches of mud down there and it took out the back part of our hardware store,” co-owner Jina Alboreo said, recalling flooding earlier in the week as she watched water rushing under the floor. “Water was all over.”
The store, which fronts Main Street and includes a bar and restaurant, remains open, its first floor untouched. But its gas tanks — the only ones in town — are no longer operating, as they had to be removed due to flooding.
Harry’s was among the homes and businesses in Cabot and neighboring Marshfield that were damaged by flooding earlier in the week. The neighboring central Vermont towns were both busy Wednesday cleaning up from flooding, which wreaked damage to bridges and roadways that made it difficult to get there from here.
In Marshfield, a large section of Route 2, the main thoroughfare into town, remained closed Wednesday afternoon. Motorists had to use side, bumpy and at times steep roads to reach the community.
The Cabot town offices in the Willey Building, located across Main Street from the flooded businesses in the center of town, suffered water damage from the flood, and the town clerk’s office had to move from the basement to an upper floor while cleanup work was done.
Mike Hogan, Cabot Selectboard chair, said Wednesday he didn’t believe the town lost any vital records, though a couple of computers may not have been so lucky.
Hogan said officials were still assessing damage across the community, though flooding had affected several sections of the town. Hogan said he had no dollar estimate yet for the damage in town.
“We’re taking kind of an inventory of people on back roads that are not reachable yet to see if we can reach them so that we can bring food and fuel to them,” he said.
He also reported widespread damage to town roads, bridges, sewer lines and recreation fields. A pedestrian bridge that spanned the Winooski River in the village was destroyed, and a vehicle carried by floodwaters was precariously perched atop rocks between two Main Street businesses.
In Marshfield, Justin Campbell, a selectboard member and the town’s emergency management director, said Wednesday afternoon virtually every road in the community felt an impact from the flooding.
“Basically, every road in the town of Marshfield has been affected,” he said. Earlier this week, about a dozen were impassable, but that number had dropped to about six by Wednesday.
Closure of Route 2 “is a major disruption” for Marshfield, Campbell said. He was awaiting a “status report” Wednesday from the Vermont Agency of Transportation.
Another problem, Campbell said, was drinking water. A “major landslide” washed out Folsom Hill, where the village’s water system is located.
“We still are waiting on an emergency water drop because the municipal water in Marshfield village is out of service,” he said.
Marshfield Town Clerk Bobbi Brimblecombe praised the work of Green Mountain Power, the electric utility; it operates a dam in town, and did a lot of preparation work that helped keep the flood damage from being even worse. She said that work increased the hydroelectric dam’s capacity for holding back water.
“They lowered the level intentionally last week, knowing that this rain was coming,” Campbell said. Water breaching the dam “was never an issue earlier this week.”
Back in Cabot, at Harry’s Hardware, Alboreo vowed that she, along with co-owner Johanna Thibault, planned to do what’s needed to keep the business going.
“It’s a very special place,” she said of the establishment.
