Hurricane Irene

[Krazyfj]

Anyone hear from Wally?

 

[rain76king]

YT search party?

In all seriousness I hope those guys are okay, if anyone hears from them please post up or IM me.

I'm guessing we may have to look at our schedule and plan something else for our September trail ride.

 

[Sporin]

Gary may say otherwise, but I don't see a chance in hell of the Long Trail Run happening this year... the area we run in is one of the hardest hit.

 

[rain76king]

That's pretty much what I figured.
Volunteer weekend in VT anyone? I'm sure we could contact Red Cross and find something to do up there. May even be able to use our yotas.

 

[Sporin]

Progress on Route 4...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncbEC-lFk4s

Before shots of the same spot:

 

[Sporin]

That's pretty much what I figured.
Volunteer weekend in VT anyone? I'm sure we could contact Red Cross and find something to do up there. May even be able to use our yotas.

I put the word out via my church and local food bank offering me and my truck's services. There are a lot of dirt roads around me that are washed out enough to keep the elderly and less mobile house-bound, but not so bad that they take priority for fixing. Hoping if someone is in need of a delivery of food and water I can help.

I'm sure there will be lots of opportunities to get the shovels and rakes out there and help with clean up as areas are assessed for safety then moved into the clean up and recovery phase. We've had helicopters going overhead frequently the last few days as FEMA rolled in to start the process.

I feel incredibly fortunate that I wasn't hit here at all. 15 minutes West, North and South of me was devastated.

 

[Sporin]

Rochester cemetery destroyed. Yes those are coffins in in the washed out area on the left.

PHOTOS: Flood damage. Rochester cemetery destroyed - The Valley Reporter - News and views from the Mad River Valley

 

[My wife said no FJ!]

Oh no...that's horrible

 

[vtcruiser60]

Anyone hear from Wally?

The word from Dan Burke (Rabid) is that Wally, Dan, and other Bennington folk are ok. Phone service is spotty down there.

 

[rapovt]

I am okay. Just got power. Been a long 3 days!!

 

[rain76king]

Glad to hear.

 

[Leaping Deer]

Good to hear from you Gary. Glad you are alright.

 

[rapovt]

We have a brook that runs through a square concrete culvert that is about 12' wide and 8' tall. It usually runs about 6" deep. I have seen it up about 3' at the most. Sunday it was full and running over the road for about 100 feet and 6-12" deep. The roar of the water was loud, but there was another noise, It was boulders pounding on each other in the water, which I was guessing was running about 50MPH. It stopped raining at about 5 pm then the wind blew hard and trees started being blown over. I went inside because it was dangerous. I woke up at 2am, went outside, it was calm and It was so clear that you could see every star in the universe. It was so errie, thinking about what had just happened 12 hours earlier. I fired up my excavator and 3 hours later I had the bridge and 1/2 mile of road, one car wide so our neighborhood could get off the hill. I jumped in the truck and saw the incredible devastation as the sun came up. Many roads were impassable, houses washed away, bridges severly damaged. The pictures and videos are incredible, but they just don't tell the story. Almost all the roads are damaged, houses gone,driveways washed away, trees uprooted. Everybody is effected.
We have 5 jobs that we are working on, one is under water 20' (flood control dam0, one has about two feet of muck on it and 3 are about 20 miles east and 3 major bridges are washed out getting to them. I have heard that there is a washout on rte 131 that will take 60,000 yards to repair, That is 5,000 dump truck loads!!! and that road is about 1/2 trashed for about 10 miles. I heard that it may be next year before it is opened. As a surveyor, we do flood insurance certificates. New stuff must be built for what they call a 100 year flood, (the big one that occurs every 100 years). This was a 500 year flood. The National weather service started of with a flood watch, went to a flood warning, then went to flooding of historic proportions.

 

[Cruiser_Nerd]

Glad to hear you guys are ok. I've been flat out since Friday. We are in south central CT, lost some houses along the shore, flooding wasn't near what was predicted, couple of my dams got close to flood evac, but peaked just in time. Right now concentrating on feeding 136 generators to keep people with running water. Maybe power this week most likely next week or later. Communications was weak but improving, mainly because of inadequate standby power. Be safe in your cleanup and recovery.

 

[eleblanc]

Gary may say otherwise, but I don't see a chance in hell of the Long Trail Run happening this year... the area we run in is one of the hardest hit.

What is the long trail run?

 

[titanpat57]

I know lots of people have various problems caused by Irene...but my prayers go out to the folks here in VT....if anybody knows of a particular family struggling, please PM mme with details..

God Bless..

Pat

 

[Sporin]

What is the long trail run?

The last few years we've done a very pretty run in Gary & My's area that sees some great foliage, climbs a few mountains, and ends at the Long Trail Brewery.

The areas we run though were some of the hardest hit by the storm and floods.

 

[40Flipper]

Glad you're ok Gary. Can't imagine living through whats going on up there.

 

[Sporin]

Great story in the paper today about the Vermont Jeep Association lending their skills and knowledge to the rescue and recovery effort!
Valley News ~ Full Story

Vt. Storm Relief Finds a Way
By Alex Hanson
Valley News Staff Writer

Bethel -- It's fair to say that people who drive Jeeps and four-wheelers through the woods feel vindicated.

Tim “TJ” Shonio drove to Bethel from Rochester yesterday over Mt. Hunger in his jacked-up Jeep Cherokee. His girlfriend, Brandi Smith, has a house in East Randolph that they hadn't seen since Tropical Storm Irene rolled through on Sunday, and they also used the trip to pick up some food.

“If it wasn't for all of us that do jeeping, none of these roads would be open,” Shonio said.

Shonio was part of a second flood yesterday, a wave of people rolling out of the isolated hills in Bethel, Stockbridge and Rochester in search of gas, food, fellowship and other necessities. They arrived in downtown Bethel on ATVs, in Jeeps, on bicycles and on foot.

Vermont State Police, with the help of members of the Vermont Jeep Association, yesterday morning evacuated two men from Rochester who needed dialysis, then headed back to evacuate two people from Stockbridge with medical needs, said Trooper Chris Blais, a member of the Jeep club.

“We have these lovely volunteers here to help us facilitate this,” Blais said.

It took a while for the state police to figure out how to put the Jeep club members to use. There were nine Jeeps in the parking lot at the Royalton state police barracks by noon yesterday. After waiting for direction until 1:30 or so, a group of five left on their own to open up overland routes to Rochester. The last pair didn't leave until 5 p.m., on a mission to ferry 15 cans of gas to town generators in Stockbridge and Rochester.

“Everybody's looking for something to do,” said Brian Carpenter, president of the Jeep association and a Richmond, Vt., resident.

Today might have been the last day off-road vehicles would provide the only access to towns cut off by flooding. A road link was established to Rochester through Warren late yesterday.

But so far, most of the materials heading back to isolated, flood-stricken communities were hauled there by residents.

Brian Booth towed a trailer behind his four-wheeler to bring gas back to his home on Bethel's Brink Hill. His generator powers a dental lab that he runs from his home.

“Most of my customers are in Rutland,” Booth said. “I don't know if I'm going to have any business.”

Bethel teemed with activity yesterday as ATVs drove up and down Main Street, a fleet of dump trucks hauled stone to washed-out roads and residents from the hills who hadn't been able to get to town greeted one another.

“It's surreal,” Booth said. “It's like some post-apocalyptic nightmare that you see in the movies.”

Penny Griffin and her son Brian Griffin rode their four-wheelers into Bethel yesterday to pick up some supplies.

Other than walking, the four-wheelers were the only way they were going to get down Lilliesville Brook Road from the Lympus section of Bethel. The ATVs are useful, but they're no substitute for a paved road.

“My daughter-in-law's due to have a baby in three to four weeks,” Penny Griffin said. “I'm a little nervous about that. She can't ride a four-wheeler. That’s a no-no.”

Jamie and Lisa Floyd made the first outside contact with the remote neighborhood of Lympus Four Corners. They walked up with backpacks of fresh water.

“We wanted to make contact and let them know they were not forgotten,” said Lisa Floyd, whose parents, John and Dorothy Manning, live in Lympus Four Corners. One of their goals was to bring her parents back down into town, but “they refused to leave,” Floyd said.

“Happily,” Jamie Floyd said, “they don't need anything.” The dozen or so families have banded together, setting up a generator at the home of a diabetic woman who needs to keep her insulin refrigerated, and cooking at homes that have gas stoves. Plans were afoot to hold a block party last night to cook any remaining perishable foods.

In addition to the water, the Floyds carried news from the outside world, an account of the flooding and photos on their cell phones. “They were really hungry for news of the flood,” Jamie Floyd said.

A group of Stockbridge residents managed to traverse Mt. Hunger on a steep woods road with a four-wheel-drive pickup towing a trailer. They had loaded up with a couple of generators, several cans of gas and chests full of ice.

Jim Munyon, a Stockbridge firefighter, said he planned to take generators to homes in his neighborhood so people could run their refrigerators and freezers cold.

“We're grouping together pretty well right now,” Munyon said, adding “I'm just doing what I can do.”

Stockbridge set up a shelter Sunday night at the Gaysville Community Church and 18 people stayed overnight. People have either gone back home or to stay with friends.

Route 107, the main road to Stockbridge, is still closed past the Bethel line, but Stan Stawicki and Steven Lowinski braved it on bicycles yesterday to fetch groceries from Bethel. Lowinski's family came up from Massachusetts because they thought Vermont would be safer during Sunday's storm. Now they’re marooned, unable to get their cars onto the road.

“We made a stupid move,” Stawicki said. “We didn't bring one car out.”

The bike ride was essential, he said. Lowinski's girlfriend turned 22 yesterday, “so we had to get an ice cream cake.”

 

[green40]

We have a brook that runs through a square concrete culvert that is about 12' wide and 8' tall. It usually runs about 6" deep. I have seen it up about 3' at the most. Sunday it was full and running over the road for about 100 feet and 6-12" deep. The roar of the water was loud, but there was another noise, It was boulders pounding on each other in the water, which I was guessing was running about 50MPH. It stopped raining at about 5 pm then the wind blew hard and trees started being blown over. I went inside because it was dangerous. I woke up at 2am, went outside, it was calm and It was so clear that you could see every star in the universe. It was so errie, thinking about what had just happened 12 hours earlier. I fired up my excavator and 3 hours later I had the bridge and 1/2 mile of road, one car wide so our neighborhood could get off the hill. I jumped in the truck and saw the incredible devastation as the sun came up. Many roads were impassable, houses washed away, bridges severly damaged. The pictures and videos are incredible, but they just don't tell the story. Almost all the roads are damaged, houses gone,driveways washed away, trees uprooted. Everybody is effected.
We have 5 jobs that we are working on, one is under water 20' (flood control dam0, one has about two feet of muck on it and 3 are about 20 miles east and 3 major bridges are washed out getting to them. I have heard that there is a washout on rte 131 that will take 60,000 yards to repair, That is 5,000 dump truck loads!!! and that road is about 1/2 trashed for about 10 miles. I heard that it may be next year before it is opened. As a surveyor, we do flood insurance certificates. New stuff must be built for what they call a 100 year flood, (the big one that occurs every 100 years). This was a 500 year flood. The National weather service started of with a flood watch, went to a flood warning, then went to flooding of historic proportions.

Nice job Gary! I'm sure the neighbors were thankful for your efforts!