PLAINFIELD, Vt. — The remnants of Hurricane Beryl brought flooding to Vermont that prompted frantic evacuations, knocked down bridges and washed away an apartment building. The disaster came a year to the day after catastrophic rainfall inundated parts of the state.
Roads were flooded, washed out or covered with debris after heavy rain that started Wednesday and persisted into Thursday. Rescues were reported Wednesday night, and some communities were under evacuation orders.
In Plainfield, residents of a six-unit apartment building had only 15 minutes to evacuate before the entire structure was swept away by floodwaters that also took out at least seven bridges and left many roads impassable and people stranded, said town Emergency Management Director Michael Billingsley. One car was swept away, but the occupant escaped, he said.
Hilary Conant, who fled her second-floor Plainfield apartment, said she also had to flee rising waters a year ago.
“The water was coming up, so I knew it was time to leave with my dog. It’s very retraumatizing,” she said. A neighbor offered a camper to temporarily house her.
In the small community of Moretown, the damage appeared worse than it was a year ago, and the school was among buildings once again damaged by floodwaters, said Tom Martin, chair of the town board. Workers hoped to install a temporary bridge Thursday on the main artery that provides access to the community, he said.
“They say we’re Vermont strong. We’ll get through it,” said Martin, his voice full of emotion.
Across the state, emergency workers assessed damage Thursday morning, and Billingsley said it could take several days to know the full extent. Areas of central Vermont, which was hit hard by last July’s flooding, suffered some of the heaviest damage. Roads and homes were also reportedly flooded in the city of Barre.
There were no immediate reports of any deaths in Vermont. State emergency managers had urged residents Wednesday to seek higher ground if floodwaters approached and said rescue teams and the National Guard were at the ready.
Vermont, far inland, nonetheless has experience with tropical weather. Tropical Storm Irene dumped 11 inches of rain on parts of Vermont in 24 hours in 2011. The storm killed six in the state, washed homes off their foundations, and damaged or destroyed more than 200 bridges and 500 miles of highway.
Parts of northern New York and New England, including Vermont, remained under flood watches or warnings early Thursday. Thunderstorms associated with Beryl were forecast for much of the East Coast through Friday, the National Weather Service said.
Beryl landed in Texas on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane and left millions in the Houston area without power. It then carved a path across the interior U.S. as a post-tropical cyclone that brought flooding and sometimes tornadoes from the Great Lakes to Canada and northern New England.
Beryl has been blamed for at least seven U.S. deaths - one in Louisiana and six in Texas - and at least 11 in the Caribbean. More than 1.3 million homes and businesses in Texas still lacked electricity early Thursday, down from a peak of over 2.7 million on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us.
The storm has caused at least $3.3 billion in damage in the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean, according to Karen Clark & Company, a Boston-based firm that works with insurance companies to estimate disaster costs.
It calculated a flash estimate Thursday of $2.7 billion in privately insured U.S. losses, along with $510 million in the Caribbean and $90 million in Mexico. The estimate is only for insured properties and does not include homes covered by the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program, so total losses will be higher.
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Associated Press writers David Sharp in Maine and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
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