HARTLAND — With local reports of up to 5 inches of rain on Friday, the town, mostly spared during Vermont’s first round of July floods, had significant road damage.
“The first wave of storms, we had very minimal damage,” Martin Dole, Hartland’s interim town manager, said on Monday. “Friday night’s 4 to 5 inches of rain in about an eight-hour span on already saturated ground finally caught up to us.”
According to Dole, 11 of Hartland’s roads washed out, and the town’s website listed 16 damaged or closed roads as of Saturday.
Reeves Road, which connects Woodstock and Hartland, was completely impassable on Monday, with a 4-foot-deep cavern running across the width of the road.
The nearby town of Reading also reported new road washouts, as well as damage to repairs on roads that had flooded earlier this month.
And in Woodstock, near the Hartland town line, Morgan Hill Road had partially washed out, and The Loop Road had to be closed, as a once-tiny brook washed the gravel all the way down to the ledge beneath it.
In Hartland, a few basements flooded, but Dole had not heard of significant damage to homes or businesses.
Currently, the town is working to get roads passable, Dole said, not “fixed.”
And since the damage, he’d been in touch with the local regional planning organization to start working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A major disaster declaration was approved for Windsor County earlier this month.
Nearby Reading experienced significant flooding July 10, including a bridge along Route 106 that was destroyed.
While Friday night’s rain did not match the first storm’s totals, Robert Allen, a Reading selectboard member, said new flooding had destroyed some progress in fixing washouts and created new damage as well.
“We had a couple of roads that experienced washouts that didn’t get hurt in the initial storm,” Allen said.
“The first time it was debris,” Allen said, describing what caused damage in the initial round of flooding. “This time it was so much water that the culverts just couldn’t take it.”
He said a rain gauge at his home measured more than 2.5 inches of rain in about four hours on Friday.
“My wife and I went over every single road in town yesterday and made notes,” Allen said. “We wanted to catch anything that was new, and we knew we were looking at some of the stuff we had not gotten to yet.”
On Monday, Allen said he was working on Town Hill Road. He said residents should contact him if they wish to report road damage.
“We’re surveying roads every time we have a storm,” Allen said. With streams high and the ground saturated, additional flooding is possible. In the meantime, Reading is waiting to work directly with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“But we’ve been told we’re on the list,” Allen said.
