NEWFANE, Vt. — National Guard helicopters rushed food and water Tuesday to a dozen cut-off Vermont towns after the rainy remnants of Hurricane Irene washed out roads and bridges in a deluge that took many people in the landlocked New England state by surprise.
“As soon as we can get help, we need help,” Liam McKinley said by cellphone from a mountain above flood-stricken Rochester, Vt.
Up to 11 inches of rain from the weekend storm turned placid streams into churning, brown torrents that knocked homes off their foundations, flattened trees and took giant bites out of the asphalt across the countryside. At least three people died in Vermont.
“I think that people are still a little shell-shocked right now,” Gail Devine, director of the Woodstock Recreation Center, said as volunteers moved furniture out of the flooded basement and shoveled out thick mud that filled the center’s two swimming pools. “There’s just a lot of disbelief on people’s faces. It came through so quickly, and there’s so much damage.”
Flying supplies into towns
As crews raced to repair the roads, the National Guard began flying in supplies to the towns of Cavendish, Granville, Hancock, Killington-Mendon, Marlboro, Pittsfield, Plymouth, Rochester, Stockbridge, Strafford, Stratton and Wardsboro. The Guard also used heavy-duty vehicles to bring relief to flood-stricken communities still reachable by road.
The cut-off towns ranged in population from under 200 (Stratton) to nearly 1,400 (Cavendish).
“If it’s a life-and-death situation, where someone needs to be Medevac-ed or taken to a hospital, we would get a helicopter there to airlift them out, if we could get close to them. A lot of these areas are mountainous areas where there may not be a place to land,” said Mark Bosma, a spokesman for Vermont Emergency Management.
In Rochester, where telephones were out and damage was severe, people could be seen from helicopters standing in line outside a grocery store. McKinley said the town’s restaurants and a supermarket were giving food away rather than let it spoil, and townspeople were helping one another.
“We’ve been fine so far,” he said. “The worst part is not being able to communicate with the rest of the state and know when people are coming in.”
He said government agencies did a good job of warning people about the storm.
“But here in Vermont, I think we just didn’t expect it and didn’t prepare for it,” he said. “I thought, how could it happen here?”
Access to Rochester and Stratton by road was restored later in the day, officials said.
All together, the storm has been blamed for at least 42 deaths in 12 states. More than 2.5 million people from North Carolina to Maine were still without electricity Tuesday, three days after the hurricane churned up the Eastern Seaboard.
Heavy damage far from sea
While all eyes were on the coast as Irene swirled northward, some of the worst destruction took place well inland, away from the storm’s most punishing winds. In Vermont, Gov. Peter Shumlin called it the worst flooding in a century. Small towns in upstate New York — especially in the Catskills and the Adirondacks — were also besieged by floodwaters.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, where Irene blew ashore Saturday along the Outer Banks before heading for New York and New England, Gov. Beverly Perdue said the hurricane destroyed more than 1,100 homes and caused at least $70 million in damage.
Airlines said it would be days before the thousands of passengers stranded by Irene find their way home.
