RSS Feed
|
|||||
|
Chelsea's Jail Brook
Last Thursday morning, Winnie Royce was in her east window enjoying the sunshine on her face, watching the late morning activity of Chelsea village with her usual watchful eye. Facing the south common, the retired school librarian had seen all the kids arrive at school, people had gone to work, and the daily traffic was humming by on Route 110. But the spring-like morning took a sudden twist when Royce noticed water running down the center of Route 110. She saw chunks of ice floating along the yellow lines. Then her attention turned to her two driveways on the north and south ends of her house, where steady currents of water were flowing and large chunks of ice were encroaching on her front porch. The morning was no longer ordinary. Moments later, around 10:55 a.m., the Chelsea Fire Department received a call from the Wellspring School that its basement was flooding. The tone was a surprise to Fire Chief Dave Farnham because he had just returned home after driving through town to scan the levels of the First Branch River, which runs through the village and along Route 110. The 50-degree weather had officials throughout the state monitoring rivers and streams for potential flooding caused by snow melt and recent rain. As Farnham drove into town, he was shocked to see 3-4 feet of water and ice flowing down Route 110 as he crossed the Creamery Bridge at the south end of the village. He threw his truck in to four wheel drive and was able to ride the banks of the east side of the road until he reached School Street on the south side of the south common. As he drove around the common, he saw a river’s worth of water flowing violently between two buildings directly across the common on Court Street. "I never expected to see what I saw!" Farnham recalls. The Culprit Further inspection revealed that the Jail Brook had been forced to leave its banks when the box culvert under Route 110 at the Tracy Bridge became clogged with ice and debris. Jail Brook runs down into Chelsea village parallel with Route 113 until it meets the First Branch of the White River behind Winnie Royce’s property. The brook enters the village in a narrow, steep stream-bed in the middle of the block of buildings between Court Street and Route 113. When ice broke up and shifted suddenly in the brook somewhere above the village, it caused a rush of debris, water, and ice to come crashing toward Route 110. Students inside the Wellspring School as well as employees in the Probation & Parole building reported hearing what they described as thunder or a train or giant car wreck at the moment when the ice let loose and came crashing down between the buildings. All the water that should have been flowing in the rising stream was now rushing between the home of Gertrude Roberts and Wellspring School’s Wee House onto Court Street. Royce’s house sits almost directly across from the intersection of Court Street and Route 110, giving her a bird’s eye view of the flood. The water quickly found low ground, making its way down Route 110 and surging back into the First Branch by slicing a canyon in the snow of Emily Betts’ yard just prior to the Creamery Bridge. Meanwhile, of course stray currents diverged into basements and a foot of ice settled into driveways and sidewalks along the west side of Route 110. The town ice rink became a good sized pond when water and ice quickly settled there. At the School Lieutenant Tracy Simon was at the Chelsea School at the time and got a call from the sheriff’s department that there was a report of trees and ice in the river. She immediately walked through the back parking lot of the school to scan the First Branch, assuming that was where the problem was. As she approached the Creamery Bridge on Route 110, she remembers "hearing an unbelievable noise." She looked up the road in time to see "a foot of ice and water screaming down 110 at me." Farnham and Simon quickly summoned Linda Kuban, Chelsea’s Emergency Management Director, back to Chelsea from her job in Barre. Kuban, Farnham, and Simon formed the Incident Command Team. Together they identified hazards and immediate needs. Members of the fire department went from door to door to verify the safety of those at home or at work and advised folks to monitor their basements. "It was organized chaos at first, but we all know each other so we have that as a big advantage in a situation like this," said Simon. "I think we performed together really well considering the surprise of it all." Route 110 Closed Route 110 was quickly closed between School Street and Route 113. The state police and Agency of Transportation (AOT) employees joined forces with the Sheriff’s Department to direct traffic and facilitate clean-up. Chelsea’s town road crew began working quickly to clear the road and begin assessing the root of the problem around the culvert. Most basements could not be pumped out right away because water was still flowing, but the fire department began working quickly on the Roberts house because water was pouring out of the bulkhead access to the basement. The force of the water even moved a small outbuilding from its pier foundation and placed it back down conveniently on top of a picnic table about 15 feet away. Town and state road crews quickly brought in multiple pieces of heavy equipment to clear the roadway and begin extracting ice from the east end of the culvert. Several feet of rock-solid ice was wedged between the buildings along either side of Jail Brook, making the work slow and improvements small. Eventually enough ice was relocated to shift the flow of the brook back through the culvert. For Royce, the most interesting portion of the day came when John Smith arrived in his log truck. He hitched two logs, that Royce described as looking "quite fresh," together with chains and forced the long pole up into the west end of the culvert with his cherry picker again and again in an attempt to loosen the ice jammed inside. Damage, No Injuries Farnham was relieved that no one was injured as a result of the flood or the recovery effort. "I don’t want to diminish property damage," he said, "but we are really lucky that someone walking down the street or in a car was not hurt." The fire department and road crew have received countless accolades from the community in the wake of the flooding. "I was so impressed with our local people," shared Jennie Martin, a homeowner whose driveway and basement were affected, "Rick Ackerman cleaned all that ice out of my driveway; he started my car, and moved it for me. And David Farnham called my home at 8:30 that evening to make sure I was okay and that I didn’t need anything. " "We just didn’t want people to feel like we were deserting them at the end of the day," explained Farnham, who returned to the fire station that evening and personally made the calls. Surrounded by Ice Marty Gratz, whose home is adjacent to the tennis court, escaped what many thought would have been a catastrophic amount of damage to her home. "Just a trickle of muddy water came in my entrance, but my house is surrounded by ice." Gratz had ironically traveled to Montpelier that day for a conference, the hub of statewide flood paranoia, and had to be called home. Her co-workers from the school as well as a group of students responded quickly to her aid with shovels in hand. "They completely dug me out in a very short time. We actually didn’t have enough shovels!" She also spoke very highly of Ackerman, who cleared her driveway after dark that evening, and Farnham, who also called her to check in. "It was amazing for me to experience that power of community." The Laundromat building, owned by Louis Weintraub, also suffered significant damage in its basement, and required major mechanical replacements on the furnace. Its tenants are currently staying elsewhere. The Roberts basement, which is unoccupied in the winter, was reportedly cleaned out this week, but since the major culprit is ice, real cleanup cannot take place until spring. The water also caused severe damage along the edge of Route 110 in its journey back to the river, cutting a deep gorge along the edge of the pavement that will have to be refilled. The west end of the south common was also flooded with over a foot of water and now sits frozen, poised to reveal hidden mounds of debris and gravel once thawed. Governor Visits Governor Jim Douglas surveyed the damage in the village the next day and pledged to streamline connections with emergency management officials. The town has incurred many expenses in the cleanup effort of what is technically a state incident involving a state highway. Local officials are very concerned that the quick warming trend predicted through the coming weekend could cause a repeat flood. Farnham has been communicating regularly with district AOT personnel to monitor the status of the river and the culvert closely. The culvert, which runs diagonally under the road in front of the Laudromat, cannot withstand a full flow of water since it is still somewhat plugged up with ice. Some homeowners have already used sand bags to persuade any future waters to take a different course around their property. As the day progressed, Royce eventually brought a chair to her front window and sat down to take in the events of the day. And while she prefers to see "lush green or smooth white" when she looks out her window, she was equally amazed and pleased by all the different people she saw "simply helping each other" on that memorable day. J--I found out once that for some reason Laundromat is spelled with a capital. |
for larger version     |
||||
