Heavy rainfall and widespread flooding wreaked havoc in the river valleys and mountain towns of Vermont and upstate New York on Monday, devastating communities and drawing comparisons to the devastation of Tropical Storm Irene more than a decade ago.
The storm caused a night of chaos in New York on Sunday, particularly in the Hudson Valley, where up to eight inches of rain fell in some areas and one person was killed. But the center had been moved to Vermont on Monday, putting the landlocked and mountainous state — and especially a number of small, isolated towns along rivers and creeks, just like when Irene hit — in the crosshairs for major flooding.
Vermont Governor Phil Scott said he feared the massive amount of water dumped on his state by this week’s storm system could exceed the amount that fell during Irene, which killed six people in Vermont, as the region will be hit by rain several times. to dawn.
“What’s different for me is that Irene lasted about 24 hours,” he said at a press conference on Monday. “We get just as much rain, if not more, and it goes on for days. That’s my concern. It’s not just the initial damage.”
Those concerns were shared throughout Vermont, from the state capital of Montpelier, where the Winooski River was expected to reach its second highest level on record Tuesday, to the villages of southern and central Vermont, where the rivers raged furiously on Monday.
“It’s just a huge amount of water,” said Alex Beloin, who works for the wastewater department in Woodstock, Vt., as he stood on a historic covered bridge over the Ottauquechee River. “Anything that washed out during Irene is very likely to wash out again.”
Vermont officials said about 20 people have been rescued by boat so far, while many more have evacuated their homes.
David Green, the fire chief in Woodstock, said his department had asked residents of a trailer park in a flood-prone part of town to evacuate, and few hesitated.
“Irene is still quite fresh in everyone’s minds,” he said. “So most people listened to the warning without hearing it twice.”
Chief Green said Irene had been “a lasting trauma” for Vermonters. “People are very suspicious of their rivers and monitor them closely,” he added. “So far no one has been trapped where they shouldn’t be.”
Others, like Erin Clements, a flower grower who lives on a hilltop in south Londonderry, stayed put and said they felt safe even as they watched the water rise nearby.
“They have opened the church and town hall to people rescued from their homes,” said Ms. Clements, who added that her fields were flooded with seven inches of water on Monday.
In the past two weeks, many parts of central and northern New England received 200 to 300 percent of their normal rainfall for the same period, according to forecasters from the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.
As of Monday afternoon, the storm had dumped more than six inches of rain on some parts of Vermont, more than what they would normally see for the entire month of July, according to the National Weather Service. And it was expected that more rain would fall.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who toured flood damage Monday in Highland Falls, a village next to West Point on the Hudson River, said the region was “in the midst of an extraordinary, extraordinary weather event.”
Damaged roads and bridges made it difficult to estimate the extent of the damage, she said. But officials estimate it would likely run into the tens of millions of dollars.
“My friends, this is the new normal,” the governor said, referring to the effects of climate change on flooding. People should “be prepared for the worst,” she said, “because the worst keeps happening.”
Later that day, the governor said at a press conference in the Finger Lakes that more than a dozen people and five pets in that region had been rescued and power was being restored to the more than 13,000 homes statewide that were without power.
“Unfortunately, because of humanity’s assault on Mother Nature that has been going on for generations, it feels like it’s time to pay back,” she said. “Mother Nature takes revenge on all of us.”
The person killed in New York was a 35-year-old woman who was evacuating her home and was carrying a dog when she lost her footing and was swept into a ravine, said Steven M. Neuhaus, the Orange County district attorney, New York. name was not released Monday.
The storm severed transportation links between New York City and the upstate region. Metro-North Railroad tracks were blocked by fallen trees, boulders, mud and water. Roads, including the Palisades Interstate Parkway, were made impassable and several bridges were damaged.
In Highland Falls, a stream burst its banks on Sunday when tree branches clogged culverts, sending water and mud down Main Street. On Monday, Peter Deverin, a 20-year-old ROTC cadet, with a friend, John Venino, also 20, helped shovel mud and mangled branches from Main Street.
The two got caught in the teeth of the storm on a Sunday ride — the rain “got harder and harder and harder,” said Mr. Deverin — and seemed grateful to have survived.
“The boulders flew off the side of the mountain, cars were swept across the street,” Mr Deverin said. “It was like something out of a horror movie.”
With most of Vermont’s flooded waterways still at their peak and nearly three dozen states’ roads closed due to high water, Mike Cannon, an official with Vermont Urban Search and Rescue, said the state is in a better position today to rescue people from flooded areas. than Tropical Storm Irene. It now has 12 rapid water rescue teams compared to four then. On Monday, two more were on hand from North Carolina, and a larger search and rescue team from Massachusetts was on standby.
Late Monday afternoon, the Colonial Motel and Inn in Weston was nearly full of evacuees, said Natalie Boston, a city administrative assistant.
And in South Londonderry, three people were sheltering from the storm at First Baptist Church: Judy Cobb, a church member and volunteer with the local rescue team; a 99-year-old woman who had left her home earlier in the day, and a young man who had slept all day on the church pew.
Mrs Cobb had come to help those in need, and now, like her, she was trapped in South Londonderry after the bridges in the area were closed and she had no way of getting home.
“You just make the best of everything,” she said.
Reporting contributed by Claire Moses, Anna Bets, Erin Nolan, Judson Jones And Christine Hauser