“It was worse than we could have imagined, frankly,’’ said Tom Donahue, president of the Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce, which serves an area of the state left almost entirely isolated. “It’s once-in-a-lifetime damage - hopefully. I really feel everyone was prepared, but I don’t think you could have been fully prepared for something of this magnitude.’’
Orange traffic cones were as common as cows in parts of Vermont yesterday as work crews dealt with washouts along about 260 local and state roads and highways.
Among them was Route 4, the main east-west route across the center of the state, which runs through Rutland and past the Killington ski resort. Central Vermont Public Service, one of the state’s largest utilities, will take the unprecedented step of hiring a contractor, in collaboration with the state, to build a narrow bypass into Mendon from the west until the state highway can be restored, said Steve Costello, a spokesman for the utility.
Crusty mud drying in the hot sun turned some stretches of highway into minidust bowls as 18-wheelers attempted improbable U-turns to steer clear of road closings, while chunks of broken trees and debris festooned small bridges over tiny streams grown suddenly muscular.
Sue Minter, Vermont’s deputy secretary of transportation, said officials closed 30 state bridges and an uncounted number of municipal bridges. Many were washed away, she said, and others remain in place but await inspection by engineers to be deemed safe.
President Obama declared the state a federal disaster area yesterday. By the afternoon, a dozen communities remained inaccessible by road, and even the state’s emergency management headquarters was evacuated, forcing officials to relocate from Waterbury to Burlington.
“We haven’t seen flooding like this, certainly since the early part of the 1900s,’’ Governor Peter Shumlin told The Associated Press. “The areas that got flooding are in really tough shape.’’
The bodies of three people were recovered from flood waters and a lake, and a fourth person was still missing last night.
