JAMAICA — In the heavy rain on Monday afternoon, Diana DeMarsico drove to the village of Jamaica and bought a sandwich.
She usually parks her car alongside the barn at her home on a hillside on West Hill Road, but this time she left the car out front, near the road. She wanted to be in a place where she could leave quickly if she had to.
DeMarsico was aware of the threat of flooding. She had previously spent about $20,000 to excavate around her home in an effort to improve drainage.
When DeMarsico returned to her home on Monday afternoon, the water had already started to spill over a retaining wall she had built along the roadside. She put sandbags around her doorway.
West Hill Road had drainage ditches along the road to handle runoff from uphill, but DeMarsico said the road itself became like a river.
“At first it was just water,” DeMarsico said. “And then you could just hear the thunder of these huge boulders coming down and then it just kind of swept over the car and I was in the door and it started coming inside and I was like, ‘Oh no.’”
Water flowed into the first floor of her home and filled her basement. A slurry of mud and rocks rushed down the hill and covered her car completely. Rocks bounced against the side of her house and blocked the doors to the barn.
Inside the barn, three sheep were standing in water that was over 2 feet deep. Hay and grain floated around the barn as the sheep swam. To get her sheep out of the barn, she brought them all through her house, since the doors were blocked by piles of stone.
It was midafternoon on Monday and it was still raining. The fire department and Rescue Inc., an emergency medical service based in Brattleboro, arrived at that point. At first DeMarsico thought the firefighters would only help to pump out the water from the basement, but they informed her that, because of the strength of the water, DeMarsico would need to evacuate.
But the water was still rushing down the hill in front of her house and evacuation wouldn’t be so simple. Her car was covered in debris. The Rescue crew decided on a swiftwater rescue, using ropes to get her downhill to solid ground.
Rescue Inc. Chief Drew Hazelton was on scene for the rescue. A six-person crew was on scene and three took part in the rescue. He noted it was particularly challenging.
“The debris was one of the more challenging components of that rescue,” Hazelton said in an interview. Rescuers were getting hit with rocks as they tried to cross the rushing water.
The Rescue Inc. swiftwater rescue teams, three teams in total, would go on to perform rescues all over the region — Weston, Londonderry, Wardsboro, Ludlow and even New Hampshire.
Once back to safety, the rescue team gave DeMarsico a ride to stay with family. She returned to her home Monday night and tried to assess the damage. The first floor of her house had a layer of mud. She couldn’t look at the flooded basement without being traumatized.
On Wednesday, an excavator repairing the road was making slow progress toward DeMarsico’s house as she spoke with VTDigger. She is originally from Wardsboro but lived in California for about 20 years. She bought her home about a year and a half ago in a return to her home state.
Shortly before the flood, she was laid off from her job and was using her home to turn her flower-growing hobby into a wholesale business. Much of her growing operation was flooded in her basement.
She pointed and gestured to where the water and debris came from. A pile of rocks nearly covered her Volkswagen. The yellow handle of a shovel poked through the debris, blocking the barn doors.
As she spoke, neighbors walked up to ask her if she needed anything. She’s still cut off from town, as are a handful of homes farther up on West Hill Road. One neighbor, Gigi Norwood, hiked up the road with a backpack full of groceries.
DeMarsico isn’t sure what’s next. She doesn’t know whether her car works, since it’s still covered in rocks and she can’t get into it. She can’t start the process of cleaning her flooded home because no one can get to the home, except on foot. She lost her internet and there’s no cell service.
“This is all I really have,” she said, pointing at the scene. Down the hill, the excavator was still making steady progress, slowly rebuilding the dirt road.
