WATERBURY, Vt. ? Hurricane Irene crossed into Canada, leaving millions of people in the USA without power, billions of dollars in damage and residents in Vermont battling raging rivers and the worst flooding to hit the state in a century.
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More than 20 people died in the storm that swept up the East Coast over the weekend.
The storm didn't become the big-city nightmare that forecasters and public officials predicted, but in small towns in Vermont, hundreds of people have been evacuated after rain dumped 15 inches on some parts of the state. Hundreds of roads have been cut off, and up to 50,000 electric customers have lost power in a state with a population of 630,000. Phone lines are cut off, and at least three historic bridges are gone.
Two people in Vermont died in the storm. President Obama signed a disaster declaration Monday and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts.
"We prepared for the worst, and we got the worst in central and southern Vermont," Gov. Peter Shumlin said Monday. "We haven't seen flooding like this, certainly since the early part of the 1900s. The areas that got flooding are in really tough shape."
He planned to tour the state Monday.
Most of the state's major rivers will crest Monday. Saturday, Bunyan, N.C., received more than 15 inches of rain from the then-hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center
Col. Tom L'Esperance, director of the Vermont State Police, said that although the state has sustained isolated weather problems in the past, the havoc associated with Irene was a first for him.
"It's an extraordinary amount of water for us to obviously absorb and sustain. Stay in, stay safe, stay dry," Shumlin said Monday at the Vermont Department of Public Safety, where he monitored the storm's impact. "We expect further flash flooding. We have roads, bridges, culverts washed out. We have communities isolated by high levels of water."
More than 150 primary and secondary roads, including part of Interstate 91 in southern Vermont, have been shut down.
A 21-year-old woman is missing and feared dead in Wilmington, Vt., which the governor described as being "isolated" in flooding from the Deerfield River because of the storm. The Vermont State Police in Brattleboro confirmed a second death of a child in the Wilmington area following devastating flooding there.
"Obviously the concern for us is that's when people hop into vehicles, go out to see what happened, you have downed power lines, you have flooded roads, you have high levels of standing water," the governor said.
The water began to recede overnight, ending a threat to the Marshfield dam, upriver from Montpelier, and eliminating the possibility engineers would have to release water from the dam, which would have increased floodwaters in the swollen Winooski River.
"From what we're seeing this is one of the top weather-related disasters in Vermont's history," National Weather Service Hydrologist Greg Hanson said early Monday.
"We've heard reports of houses and cars washing away," Hanson said. "We're keeping our fingers crossed all those were empty."
Parts of downtown Brattleboro and Bennington were under water Sunday after the storm passed. At least nine shelters were set up across the state, although it's unclear how many people spent the night in them.
In Waterbury on Monday morning, residents and business owners sifted through the muddy wreckage along U.S. 2 in the center of town. They had been evacuated at around 7:30 p.m. Sunday, just ahead of the surging Winooski River.
Waterbury Service Center owner Albert Caron arrived at work around 7:30 a.m. to find water marks across the hoods of parked cars he had repaired days earlier. He opened the door to find the shop covered in muck and oil, and oil bottles and soggy cardboard boxes scattered about.
Equipment worth many thousands of dollars was ruined, as was a $2,000 computer in his office.
"I don't know where to start," Caron said. He and a co-worker began taking photos to send to the insurance company. He said he doesn't know whether he's fully covered.
At Arvad's Grill and Pub, the main floor of the restaurant was dry, but the restaurant's basement was flooded along with two businesses on the lower level of the building, which had up to 5 feet of water.
"We even sandbagged, but it wasn't quite up to task," said restaurant co-owner Jeffrey Larkin. "Everyone I talked to, all the old timers, they haven't seen anything like this."
Central Vermont Public Service said it will be many days before some of its 27,600 customers who had no electricity Monday morning get their power back.
"We are in uncharted territory," said Joe Kraus of CVPS. "In many places, we can't even get to the damage. It is impossible to say how long it will take to restore power to all customers, but many areas are totally inaccessible, roads are gone, and in some cases, it could take weeks. In areas that we can get to, restoration will likely take days."
Many CVPS workers were stranded by rising waters. Some workers had to spend the night in offices, and in southern Vermont, workers were invited to spend the night with customers after they were trapped by flooding.
Even Vermont Emergency Management's Waterbury disaster command post fell victim to the flooding. Command center personnel had to hastily abandon the Public Safety Department building Sunday night as surging Winooski River floodwater surged into the building.
Donoghue reports for the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press. Contributing: Associated Press.
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