“It was ripping and tearing and crunching,” said Bradley, a retired school administrator who has lived in the 19th-century home on the riverbank since 1986. “It sounded like some sort of monster.”
At daybreak on Thursday, Bradley and others surveyed a startling scene of destruction. The bridge had disappeared. A central road in the village ended abruptly at a sheer drop to the creek, which was still swollen to several times its usual size, fast moving, and full of mud and debris.
Where most of the apartment building, known locally as the Heartbreak Hotel, had stood, there was little more than sand. Town officials said that when the bridge gave out at about 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, it crashed into the apartment building’s support beams, wrenching five of its seven apartments into the brook. Officials said everybody had left the building before it came apart, so nobody was injured.
Eli Barlow was standing in a neighbor’s yard, close to the creek, when his apartment was swept down the brook. It was too dark to see exactly what happened.
Barlow said he had planned to stay overnight with a friend if the building was cut off from dry land. Before he left, he moved his roommate’s kayaks and some bikes away from the lower levels of the apartment building. He threw some clothes in a bag and drove his car and his roommate’s vehicle to higher ground at a nearby recreation field.
“But I left all the car keys on the kitchen counter,” he said ruefully. “I didn’t think my apartment was going to fall in the river.”
In the town, this disaster was worse than last year’s, said Lauren Geiger, whose tall brick house was surrounded by several feet of sand and mud. The air smelled strongly of sewage and gas. A trio of local firefighters struggled to free a large propane tank that had been tossed onto a lawn and entangled in debris. Soon after, the fire department asked Geiger and her husband, Peter Young, to leave the house.
State Route 2, which runs through Plainfield, was closed on both sides of the village, hindering access to Montpelier and St. Johnsbury. The local Maplefields convenience store had no water and posted signs on the front doors: “No coffee.”
After last year’s devastating floods, neighbors who weren’t affected knew what was needed. By 9 a.m., people from just outside the village were arriving with water, shovels and wheelbarrows. On Thursday night, volunteers set up a large potluck dinner on the stone wall of the church that is Plainfield’s central gathering place. Neighbors posted on social media asking how they could help.
Last year, she said, the brook also breached its banks.
“We applied for a buyout, but FEMA said we’re not in the flood zone,” she said bitterly.
Belotserkovsky is one of many people who will be applying for aid in coming weeks and months to replace lost homes, cars and other belongings. Water and mud infiltrated several houses, and Town Clerk Bram Towbin said a few homes outside the village were destroyed.
Just hours into the recovery, Towbin had tallied eight town-owned bridges on one road that were damaged or destroyed. Some roads were impassable, with sections missing, he added. Plainfield was still awaiting FEMA reimbursement of about $200,000 for road work the town completed after last summer’s flooding, Towbin said.
“For a town with a budget of $1.3 million, that is huge,” he said. “And if last year’s flood cost $320,000, this event is a multimillion-dollar event.”
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This article appears in The Cartoon Issue 2024.
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