Heavy rain Wednesday night and Thursday morning inundated northern and central Vermont, causing severe flooding in many communities.
For some towns, like Waterbury, floods have become an all-too-frequent part of life.
By 9 a.m. on Thursday, the Winooski River had receded from Randall Street. Residents had set up a tent where they were handing out water and assessing damage. Several houses were pumping water out of their basements.
Live updates: Find the latest flooding information on Vermont Public's live blog
For residents like Jessica Burrill, this process has become familiar. Randall Street flooded during Tropical Storm Irene and then twice last year — in July and December.
Burrill and her partner Brian Kravitz initially thought that this time might be different. But as Wednesday night wore on, the Winooski kept creeping closer, Kravitz said.
“When the water started to get to about here and it was dripping in the house, I was like, if it stays right here, we're good,” Kravitz said, pointing to a garden near the foundation of the house. “And then it just inched up … and then we become part of the river.”
Around the corner from Kravitz and Burrill on Elm Street, Nathan Dunbar was spraying mud off the sidewalk in front of his store, Vermont Beer Collective. He and his wife bought the shop last May — five weeks before last July’s flood.
“So this is number two, actually number three, and in just over a year,” Dunbar said.
The store managed to escape this flood unscathed. Last year the shop had about 8 feet of water in the basement. This time it was only 8 inches.
“It sucks — luckily, there's no material damage,” Dunbar said. “So yeah, not much we could do about it … If this is going to happen twice a year now going forward, all we can do is try and have a little fun with it, I guess. So we'll be opening up serving some beers, helping out the community.”
According to Waterbury officials, a few roads in town were heavily damaged, but things aren’t as bad as last summer, or when Waterbury was famously pummeled by Irene in 2011.
“That doesn't mean that people don't have flooded properties here in Waterbury,” said Gary Dillon, Waterbury’s fire chief. “We have some businesses that have had flooding, but the damage is not there. And so I guess, we can be thankful for that.”
Back at Kravitz and Burrill’s house, they were waiting for the 4.5 feet of water in the basement to drain. Once that happens, they’ll start the clean up.
“Hopefully there isn't a lot of mud,” Kravitz said. “But we're all pretty experts on the street of how to clean out the you know how to get the mud out. You have a couple of wet vacs and a pressure washer and some brooms and a bunch of people and buckets.”
“And then next summer, it'll come back to the basement,” Burrill added.
Years ago state officials drafted a plan to create a floodplain on the cornfield behind Kravitz’s house. That land is owned by the state but the project was never built — in part because the broader plan required using a portion of privately owned land — and the property owners refused to participate.
Kravitz hopes the state will revive the project on the state-owned cornfield.
“What we know is that had they done the cornfield, this would have flooded and it wouldn't have flooded in December,” Kravitz said.
As he surveyed one of Vermont’s most frequently flooded neighborhoods, with the Winooski River still in his backyard, Kravitz said any amount of flood reduction would help.
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