Floods Wreak Havoc
On Several Towns

This roof is all that is left of a good-sized shed that stood in the way of the rampaging Jail Brook in Chelsea Saturday. (Herald / Cornelia Cesari)

Warmer temperatures, heavy rain, and high winds last weekend caused flooding from melting of the heavy snow pack, downed trees, closed roads, and damaged buildings in the White River Valley, and caused headaches for utility crews.

The three towns hit hardest by the storm were Chelsea, Tunbridge, and Strafford, where the toll included damaged buildings, collapsed chimneys, flooded cellars, and broken windows. Route 110 was closed in both Chelsea and Tunbridge when ice jams caused brooks to come up out of their banks and flood the road.

CVPS reported that downed trees caused power outages beginning at around 11 p.m. Saturday night in the Route 100 towns of Pittsfield, Stockbridge, Rochester, Hancock and Granville. Many folks there had no electricity all day Sunday, but most were back online by early that evening.

Chelsea

Jail Brook jumped its banks Saturday night, at about 7 p.m. for the second time in about 40 years. The first time was last March 21, less than a year ago.

Last year's greatest challenge was breaking through a clogged culvert under Route 110. Among the resourceful efforts was an attempt to "swab it out" with a log truck, using a battering ram of two logs chained together. 

This year, according to Chelsea Fire Chief Dave Farnham, a mass of ice chunks and debris clogged the bridge by the courthouse and overran the banks. Then it let loose and clogged the next bridge; however, water continued to flow through under the ice jam.

That prevented the flooding and water damage of last year, but the solid mass of ice and debris smashed windows in Bobby Hutchinson’s house across from the sheriff's department and left about a foot of ice chunks inside. It dislodged and destroyed a small red barn belonging to Dave Button, washing lumber down the road and leaving the roof structure behind. It ripped an outdoor ramp off the old Grange (Laundromat) building, stranding a disabled resident in his apartment upstairs. (He was successfully evacuated).

Kuban also credits an early report of the incident. Emergency workers were aware of the danger and a Chelsea fire fighter had just recently checked the level of the river when Vershire Fire Chief Steve Ward happened to drive through Chelsea and see the ice coming down the road. He used his radio to alert Farnham, then called dispatch in South Royalton.

According to Farnham, John Beebe was in town at the time and went right to work with his plow truck, clearing the ice from North Court Street so it wouldn’t clog and back up. The high snowbanks helped contain the flow.

Farnham called the town selectmen, the road crew, and the state crew, as per the Emergency Response Plan, and raced to town. Ultimately, Route 110 was closed for about an hour and a half, and the situation was under control by 8:30 p.m.

Just last month, Kevin Geiger, of Two Rivers Ottauquechee Regional Commission, spoke with the Chelsea Planning Commission about flood plain ordinances and planning. Referring specifically to the Jail Brook in Chelsea, Geiger explained that it runs through a V-channel, on bedrock, so it is effectively "self-armored."

It cannot carve a deeper channel or spread beyond its banks. With an increase in volume (of water and/or ice flow), when the river hits the constriction of those bridges or culverts, it has nowhere to go but up over the road.

Local resident Russ Martin praised the response, saying, "They were really good: the town crew, the fire department; everyone got right to work. They plowed up barriers to try to direct the water back into the brook and protect the houses." Martin has a personal stake, as a homeowner at the "bottom" of the common.

Both Kuban and Farnham acknowledge that going through a similar incident last year helped this year’s efficient handling of the situation.

"Maybe we were more prepared, knew what to do," said Farnham. "Last year we were pulling our hair out cause we’d never seen anything like it."

Tunbridge

A tributary of the First Branch just south of the village on the east side of Rte. 110 swelled to the breaking point Saturday night.

Once the brook up on the steep hill filled up and the ice dam broke loose, a wave of water, ice, snow and debris came raging down toward the road. When the culvert could not handle the capacity, the stream rerouted itself and filled about 75 feet of Rte. 110 with slush, logs, ice and water roughly three feet deep.

Not long after it occurred, the driver of a vehicle came upon the scene and when they realized the road was impassible, turned around and stopped in at the nearby home of Tunbridge Fire Department Chief John Durkee to report what had happened. Durkee called the situation in and there were soon many respondents on the scene from the TFD.

The road was closed and traffic detoured around 8 p.m. The State Highway Dept. quickly showed up with a bucket loader to clear the road. Nobody was hurt, but Durkee said, "It was a good thing nobody was driving by when the wave hit the road because it would not have surprised me if it would have washed a vehicle right off the road."

There was a report of a similar occurrence up near the ball field in Tunbridge, also on Rte. 110, but it wasn't big enough to close the road and apparently did not need any work.

A resident on Monarch Hill recorded a wind gust Saturday night at 65 mph!

Strafford

In Strafford, warm weather sent snow and ice cascading off the roofs, taking with it the chimney and satellite dish at Melvin and Sue Coburn’s South Strafford home. Ann Kitchel also lost the chimney at her Huntington Farm house and Sue Clark reported that her porch roof bucked in.

Heavy rain Saturday night caused brooks in Taylor Valley and Old City area to plug bridges with ice and water. Snow rose up over the tops of a number of them, damaging guardrails, but not taking out any of the bridges themselves.

The brook just above the upper village on the Brook Road plugged up and overflowed its banks, flooding the cellars of the Johnstons, the house next door, and Al Finn. Bob and Stefanie Johnston’s son Karl’s excavator was used to clear a new channel, but the folks who recently bought the old Siebert place next to the Johnston’s ended up with five feet of water in the cellar and a destroyed furnace and water heater.

A windstorm Saturday night took down some trees but there were few, if any, power outages.

(Herald correspondents Cornelia Cesari, Scott Beavers, John Freitag and Martha Slater were major contributors to this story.)