This story by Clare Shanahan was first published in the Valley News on Feb. 24
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Just as Alek Deva, his wife, Jess, and their two children were finishing dinner at about 6:15 Saturday, it started “raining sideways” into the house, Deva said, so Jess went upstairs to start closing windows.
While Jess was upstairs in their Third Avenue home in White River Junction, a tree came crashing through the roof into the bathroom on the second floor.
“We all ran to the basement and kind of huddled down there,” Deva said Monday.
But the hole made by the tree quickly began to let water into the house.
“There was like a waterfall coming down our basement stairs,” Deva said.
With the help of a neighbor, the Devas were able to get out of their house Saturday night with some valuables and are staying with friends while their dog, Marcel, stays with a different neighbor up the road. They will be unable to move back into their home for nine months to a year.
“We’re a little bit in shock, but just trying to kind of take it an hour at a time,” Deva said Monday.
The Deva family is among those recovering from a weekend storm that caused damage to buildings and roads and downed numerous trees.
In the storm’s aftermath, Hartford’s fire marshal conducted nearly 30 safety inspections on homes in town, Town Manager John Haverstock said Monday.
More than 1.5 inches of rain fell at the nearest National Weather Service reporting site in Quechee during the Saturday storm. The microburst event came after the NWS had issued a severe thunderstorm warning, which predicted gusty winds, large hail and severe flooding, NWS meteorologist Marvin Boyd said Monday.
Flooding and downed power lines caused by the rain, hail and wind closed several roads, especially in White River Junction, Quechee and Lebanon. Emergency Services and Public Works crews worked through the weekend and into Monday to clean up from the storm.
As a result of flooding, the White River Junction VA Medical Center relocated its emergency room from the Mountains Building to the ground floor of the Granite Building, according to a social media post on Sunday.
On Monday, Katherine Tang, a spokesperson for the VA, described the flooding as “brief” but said the emergency department is “fully operational and will remain in the Granite Building until repairs are made.”
During the storm, Haverstock, the town manager, said there was “a lot of standing water” in White River Junction. The flooding was a result of the “volume of water and debris” coming into the village from Route 5 and Fairview Terrace being “too great for the stormwater system to handle.”
Seven roads in Hartford were closed on Saturday, according to a social media post from the Hartford Emergency Communications Center. As of Monday morning only Pomfret Road remained closed for Green Mountain Power to do line work, Haverstock said.
“We’re not currently aware of any disastrous impact on infrastructure that would require emergency repairs or unusual cleanup costs for the municipality,” Haverstock said.
In downtown White River Junction, the volume of rain caused water to pour into cocktail bar Wolf Tree, though owner Max Overstrom-Coleman said the impact on the business “wasn’t all that serious.”
At about 6:20 p.m., an employee texted Overstrom-Coleman “there’s so much water flowing in from the ceiling it’s raining inside the bar.”
Despite the deluge, “it was a couple hours of hairiness and cleaning up and then we resumed Saturday night service,” by 8:30 p.m. Overstrom-Coleman said. The most damage was to paperwork stored in the basement. Customers even remained in the bar through the crisis and kept “really great” spirits, he said.
In Lebanon, Fire Chief Jim Wheatley said the department managed an unusually high 20 storm-related calls in three hours.
Portions of Tracy Street in West Lebanon and School Street in Lebanon were briefly closed Saturday evening and there was some flooding in West Lebanon, Wheatley said. There was no severe damage to streets or infrastructure that will require long-term repairs.
The storm also disabled the municipal fire alarm monitoring system in the city’s downtown. A notice issued through the LebAlert notification system asked that residents in the downtown not assume emergency services have been notified when a fire alarm sounds. This system was down until about noon Monday, Wheatley said. During that time there were no emergencies in the area that would have triggered the system.
Saturday evening there were nearly 1,100 people without power in Woodstock and 700 in Hartford, with outages also reported in Bridgewater, Hartland, Strafford, West Windsor and Weathersfield, according to Green Mountain Power. By Monday afternoon, 35 customers in Hartford and fewer than 20 each in Norwich, Strafford, Randolph and Sharon were without power.
About 4,000 Liberty customers were without power in Lebanon Saturday. Liberty reported no outages by Monday.
