‘WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM’

In Vermont, Irene was especially catastrophic: six deaths, more than 500 miles of roads damaged or destroyed, many towns made inaccessible for days. Covered bridges in Bartonsville, Quechee, Taftsville, and Northfield Falls were either wiped out or battered to the point of ruin; Brandon’s House of Pizza floated into the middle of U.S. Route 7; in Jamaica four homes were swept out into what one resident described as “liquid earth.” Farther north, the Rochester cemetery was washed out, scattering bones and coffins across town. “It was a horror movie,” one Vermonter recalled. “One I hope I never live through again.”

1751

Perhaps no Vermont town felt the storm quite like Wilmington. Built on the banks of the Deerfield River, this southern Vermont community of nearly 2,000 residents was transformed into an unrecognizable scene of flooding and destruction that Sunday morning of August 28th. Main Street became a tumbling waterway of building sections, propane tanks, farm animals, and waste. When the river finally retreated, it left behind a thick glaze of mud and a downtown of overturned lives. The flood also swept away a young woman who drowned trying to escape a car that had been trapped by floodwaters on Route 100.

The cleanup and recovery from Irene took years. For some, it continues even to this day. To mark the five-year anniversary of the storm, we asked a number of Wilmington residents who lived through it to tell their stories.

Flooding wasn’t a new phenomenon for the community. A 1927 hurricane had taken out the Main Street Bridge, and the ’38 storm had nearly done the same. In 1976 Hurricane Belle poured more than three feet of water into some downtown businesses. In other years, the Deerfield had spilled into parking lots and buildings. At Dot’s Restaurant it wasn’t unusual for John and Patty Reagan to clear out their basement when a big rain came. “It’s just a part of life here,” one resident says. Still, the preparation for Irene was uneven. Some braced for calamity, others less so.

SUSAN HAUGHWOUT

Wilmington town clerk

That week I ran into a woman at one of the bars downtown having a cocktail after work, and she remarked about the birds—how they were acting unusual and she felt that something was going to happen. Well, nobody paid attention to her; people thought she was being silly. But she was right.

PATTY REAGAN

Owns Dot’s Restaurant with her husband, John Even during normal rainstorms we’d get a call from the fire department in the middle of the night to tell us that the river was going to come up. But this time they called us three days before and said, “This is going to be a good one.”

DANA STONE

Former housecleaning supervisor at Mount Snow Resort

I didn’t really think it was going to flood like it did. Nobody really did. On the morning of the storm, though, the mountain told us that if we wanted to go home we were free to do so. A lot of them decided they wanted to stay there.

KEN MARCH

Wilmington fire chief

That whole I week I stayed on top of the storm, tracking it and reading as much about it as I could. What I saw was that it was looking to be very similar to what happened in 1938. I saw the highs and lows, where everything was going, and I thought, We’re going to have a problem. We started making preparations the day before, but a lot of people thought I was just crying wolf. You know: It’s not going to hit us. I said, “No, you don’t understand, it’s going to.”

LISA SULLIVAN

Owns the downtown bookstore, Bartleby’s Books

We were visiting my family in Rhode Island. My husband, Phil, is a weather junkie and had been watching the patterns and getting concerned about how much rain we’d already had and how wet the ground was. That Saturday he said, “We have to get back. I think there’s going to be water in the store.” My father thought we were crazy: “We’re going to have a hurricane party! We’re in Rhode Island—we’re the ones who are going to get the storm!” He was annoyed that we left.

Steve Butler

Owns North Star Bowling

We were told to brace for high winds, so the day before the storm I went out and moved anything that might be blown away. I also had a large bundle of clapboards that I threw a tarp over and tied down tight with rope. There was no way they were going to blow away. Well, that pile ended up floating around in the parking lot.

Florence Crafts

Lives two miles north of downtown; her husband and sons established a local logging business

My late husband, George, had grown up on this property and was five years old when ’38 hit. He watched his house get ruined pretty bad. I’ve lived here since ’56, and we’ve had water in the cellar before, but you could clean it up right away. When I heard the weather report for this storm, it sounded like it was just going to stay west. [The report] never said anything about its coming to Wilmington until later. But just to be safe, I moved a few things, some pictures and a few other family mementos, to the top of my refrigerator.