The scale of devastation on Mt. Hunger and Brook Road in Lyndon is so striking that residents of this tight-knit neighborhood are still struggling to articulate what happened to them early Tuesday morning.
“You can’t even describe it,” Prescott Small said. “I’m from Texas. We’ve done tornadoes, hurricanes, you name it. This was totally different. This was like a train coming down.”
That train arrived in the form of boulders and large trees carried by a powerful torrent of water that turned a placid, 10-foot-wide brook into a destructive force of nature that destroyed at least two homes and severely compromised two others.
Small went outside to witness the phenomenon after the loud roar of the Mountain Brook woke him up at about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday.
“There was lightning every now and then, and you’d see a flash of light and just go, ‘My brain can’t make out what I’m seeing,’” he said Wednesday. “It doesn’t make sense what I’m seeing, in a fraction of a second of light. It just didn’t compute.”
Flash flooding early Tuesday morning damaged or destroyed more than 100 residences and six businesses statewide, state officials said Wednesday. The damage was confined to tiny pockets, mostly in the Northeast Kingdom, that have in some cases been forever transformed by a singular event.
"I don’t know how we’re going to recover from it.”Nancy Hartwell, Mt. Hunger Road resident
“This land is just gone,” said Nancy Hartwell, gesturing toward the edge of a steep ravine that consumed half of her neighbor’s home. “There will never be another home here because there’s just no land. You can’t fill this back in. And the road is a big canyon now. I don’t know how we’re going to recover from it.”
Brook Road, which begins as Mt. Hunger Road, is quite literally a canyon now. Long stretches bear no trace of the road that used to connect Lyndonville with Kirby. Much of the road corridor has been carved down to bedrock that sits 20 feet below in some spots where cars once traveled.
Rick Gorham has lived on Brook Road for more than 60 years and used to own a thriving business in the home that Small now lives in.
“I ran a gun shop there for 30 years, seven days a week, and sold over 30,000 guns,” Gorham said as he surveyed the devastation around him. “It’s always been a good neighborhood. I never expected to see something like this.”
Gorham’s home is in between two sections of the road that no longer exist. He said he doesn’t mind the inconvenience.
“I don’t mind being stranded. It don’t bother me in the least. This is Vermont,” he said. “I’ve got a generator up there. I’ve got four classic cars I’m working on. … We got freezers full of meat and the garden’s good, so it’s just another day in Vermont. It doesn’t bother me any.”
What does bother Gorham is the fate of neighbors who don’t have a home to return to. He’s especially concerned about the elderly couple whose home was swallowed by the brook Tuesday morning. Neighbors say the people escaped the property uninjured and are now staying with relatives in Hardwick.
“They’re old and they’re not really well off as far as health-wise,” Gorham said. “And I don’t know where they’re going or what they’re going to do, but they got nothing left. It’s gone. So I don’t know what they will do.”
Kaja McGowan is wondering what to do with her father, a 90-year-old man in fragile health who’s lived on Brook Road for more than 60 years. McGowan’s father’s home survived Tuesday’s flood, but he lost his art studio, pond and a small guest house.
“We’re trying to figure out a way to evacuate him, in the event that the rain comes again tonight,” she said.
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The National Weather Service is forecasting as much as 4 inches of rain in central and northern Vermont later Wednesday. And municipal officials have warned McGowan that another serious rain could put her father’s home in jeopardy. Tuesday’s rain carved away nearly half the property, and the house is now significantly closer to the river’s edge than it was before Tuesday.
“He’s lived here his whole life, and he doesn’t want to leave,” McGowan said Wednesday. “This was such a beautiful property. All of this was gardens. And it’s gone.”
Small said the Brook Road residents who’ve been displaced are all older people, many in declining health.
“And we’re worried about the stress on them,” he said. “No one died. But this is incredibly stressful, and I’m worried about the older people handling it.”
Residents here are also grieving the loss of structures that held enormous symbolic significance in this small community. The house that fell into the river was, until the late 1960s, a one-room schoolhouse that Nancy Hartwell attended for four years as a young child.
“Where that garage went down there was a swing set, with a teeter-totter over here,” she said, pointing at a detached garage that pitched over an embankment. “It’s heartbreaking to see this. Such memories. And these poor people and their house. And they lost everything.”
Flood recovery resources
- For state road closure information, visit newengland511.org or follow @511VT on X. (For local road closures, use the Waze app or monitor town communications, such as a website or Facebook page.)
- You can sign up for alerts from the state at vtalert.gov.
- The latest forecasts and water levels for specific rivers are provided by the National Water Prediction Service.
- Find power outage information at vtoutages.org.
- To find more resources and services, and to report flood damage, call Vermont 2-1-1 or visit vermont211.org.
- For a list of state resources and guidance about flooding, visit vermont.gov/flood. The guidance includes returning home after a flood, cleaning up, and dealing with mold.
- Find flood recovery information in multiple languages at vem.vermont.gov/flood/translation.
- To request cleanup help from volunteers and groups, call the Crisis Cleanup hotline at 802-242-2054.
- For mental health support, call 9-8-8 or call or text the SAMHSA Disaster Distress Helpline at 1-800-985-5990.
- To register through the state to volunteer, visit vermont.gov/volunteer.
- If flood waters reached your private well or spring, order a drinking water test kit through the Vermont Department of Health.
- Find flood-prone areas near you with the Vermont Flood Ready Atlas.
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