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September 1928. President Calvin Coolidge's essay after viewing the Vermont's response to the massive flooding of 1927:

"My Fellow Vermonters:

For two days we have been traveling through this state. We have been up the East side, across and down the West side. We have seen Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Windsor, White River Junction and Bethel. We have looked toward Montpelier. We have visited Burlington and Middlebury. Returning we have seen Rutland.

I have had an opportunity of visiting again the scenes of my childhood. I want to express to you, and through the press to the other cities of Vermont, my sincere appreciation for the general hospitality bestowed upon me and my associates on the occasion of this journey.

It is gratifying to note the splendid recovery from the great catastrophe which overtook the state nearly a year ago. Transportation has been restored. The railroads are in a better condition than before. The highways are open to traffic for those who wish to travel by automobile.

Vermont is a state I love. I could not look upon the peaks of Ascutney, Killington, Mansfield, and Equinox, without being moved in a way that no other scene could move me. It was here that I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride, here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our eternal hills.

I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont."

 

September 2, 2011

Dear Friends;
     Greetings from Vermont! Many of you have been writing to ask how we faired during the recent Hurricane/Tropical Storm. First, I'd like to thank you all for your concern about our personal welfare and can assure you that Betsy and I and our children (and dogs) are all fine. Our home was unscathed and although we saw a lot of rain and our trees were really moving in the high winds, you'd never think of a hurricane's aftermath in looking at our yard. Of course, we are very lucky - many people in the Northeastern U.S. have had great personal losses, and our thoughts and prayers go out to all of them.

     While our immediate home and property are fine, the infrastructure in our immediate surroundings were devastated and, in fact, our little neighborhood has been completely cut off from the outside world. That story is fairly commonplace around here at the moment, and while you read about it below, know that many, many people in Vermont and upstate New York are having the same experience right now. I'm confident our saga will be over in the next week or so, but that is not remotely possible in many of the scenarios playing out around the region.

So, here's our story:

    Our house is on a two-acre wooded lot about half-way up a mountainside. Access is via a dirt road that goes straight up the side of the hill; we're a half-mile up and the road continues on for another quarter mile to a trailhead for the Appalachian Trail and, importantly, to a large watertank that is the hydraulic head for the water system on the east side of our town. The water system is designed so that town water is pumped up to this huge tank, and then it flows by gravity down into one side of the town (another tank near the High School serves the other side...). Just below the watertank is a 4' culvert for a creek that drains a large portion of the mountainside above us - the creek is not quite parallel to the road, and is turned to flow under the road and off down a gully.

Here is a photo of our hillside (looking East/Southeast from about three miles away) - water flows across a ridge from right to left about three-quarters of a mile, then turns and runs downhill. The change in altitude from the top of the mountain to the point where the water cuts under the road is about 1500 feet.

    Before Irene we already had a saturated region - flowers have never looked better - and it rained hard on Thursday (the creeks were full). Irene brought a long period of steady rain, which collected on the hillsides and poured into all the waterways, then mid-day Sunday it really started to rain hard. When that big surge of rain hit the already-overflowing creeks, streams and rivers the waterflow accelerated beyond anything we've seen before. This is the reason for all the major damage around here - rivers didn't just jump their banks, they blew them away, and found new routes across roads, over bridges and, in some cases, right through some very old buildings. In our case, the waterflow of the creek above our place completely overwhelmed the culvert and began pouring down the dirt road. It flowed across to and around a neighbor's house and she seemed to be in big trouble. As this scenario started to look pretty bad the culvert plugged up with debris and the river just turned straight down the road and gouged out the roadway as a new riverbed. In fact, this saved our neighbor's house from any more damage, but the torrent of water now running down the road just washed it away. No one was crazy enough to go near it and take pictures, but you can see that, after it calmed down, the river had gouged out a small canyon - it's an average of 8 feet deep and anywhere from fifteen to thirty feet across. It washed out about 200 feet of road like this and then spilled out onto a plain below. The 10" mainline from the watertank ran under the roadway and was completely exposed for over a hundred feet by this washout; many 20' sections of pipe were left unsupported and you could hear the pipes inside our house vibrating as boulders crashed down on the waterline. The good/bad part of the story is that while we lost our road, the town waterline had to be shut off and since repairing this line is a high priority, the town had a local contractor in place by Monday morning starting to put things back together. They've done a miraculous job, and it looks like they'll have the waterline back in service by the end of today (Friday), and we are just now able to get into our house by car. A seemingly endless parade of dumptrucks have been slowly working their way back up the hill; the last accurate count was that, by the end of Wednesday, 240 dumptrucks of fill had been brought up the hill! We now have power, phone/TV/Internet. It happens that I came to work and opened the store during the hurricane (a disease of the self-employed), so we have had a vehicle on the 'outside' and have been walking through the woods to a neighbor's, hauling water in backpacks.

We have lots of photos of our road, I'll just put some of them below.

As an editorial comment, I would add that an important reason why I personally chose to move to Vermont over thirty years ago was that the Yankee spirit is always in evidence here - you just can't overstate the resilience of a Vermonter. A state of small towns that has the universal personality of a small town community, it is during times of stress when the best in neighbors bubbles to the surface. Everyone is trying to be helpful to everyone else. I remarked to someone this morning that if you leave your home to go help a neighbor, you might return home to find a case of water on your doorstep and your lawn all cleaned up! All levels of government (local, state and federal) have been proactive and aggressive in dealing with the problems created by this natural disaster, and the Police, Fire and Rescue folks have been relentless in dealing with their responsibilities.  My view is that we have had a tough week that emphasizes the beauty in which we are surrounded.

Many of you have seen Vermont's problems on the news, but for a little more on how we're all dealing with the scene around here, I can suggest you take a look at the local High Schools' website and read the words of the Headmaster - there is a link there to a fund set up for assistance if you're interested in helping from a distance. It's at http://www.burrburton.org/

In Vermont, Hurricane Irene was a Flash Flood event. Small sites of complete devastation are surrounded by pristine areas of classic New England beauty that were untouched. We would be remiss if we didn't remind everyone that Vermont is intact with much of the recovery work finished, and we're open for business as usual. We encourage you to continue with any plans to visit and enjoy the state.

Again, we thank you for your concern, and wish you all the best for the fall.

Grant Turner,
Manchester Center, Vermont

This are photos of Rootville Road, taken from the access to my house. Note that the flat surface in all the images is the former road surface....