Floods hit Hardwick hard, again damaging key infrastructure

HARDWICK — “We’ve lost so much,” Opie Upson said, sitting in his pickup truck in the parking lot of the Hardwick town office around midday on Friday. He looked out the window toward the Lamoille River, which was still raging under the bridge nearby.

Upson, who’s the town manager, said Hardwick weathered this week’s storm better, in some ways, than it did last July’s devastating flooding . But the roughly 3 inches of rain that fell in town Wednesday were still enough to cause the river to jump its banks, damaging some 40 homes and businesses, washing out bridges and, like last year, impeding critical local services.

Many people were feeling angry, Upson said, that it was all happening again.

Around midday Friday, officials said that they were aware of two families who were still unable to leave their homes by land because of a washed-out bridge. Several other people, they said, had to be evacuated by swift-water rescue teams. At least a dozen roads in town were damaged by the flooding, as well as several other bridges.

Meanwhile, crews were making emergency repairs to the town’s wastewater plant, which took on about 5 feet of water — just shy of the amount that flooded it last summer. The plant, which state officials said was among the worst-damaged of such facilities in the state, was able to provide partial sewage treatment on Friday, according to Upson. But the work was far from over.

The town fire station also flooded badly, as did its largest grocery store, Tops, which is just down the street. Early Friday afternoon, workers were busy clearing out water and mud and determining what of the market’s inventory could be saved. “Store closed due to flooding,” read a handwritten sign by the door, which was surrounded by waterlogged debris.

Other businesses on that stretch of Route 15, including the town’s sole pharmacy, Walgreens, were also hit hard. Some parts of the roadway were still caked in dirt and mud, while parts of the shoulder appeared washed away.

Another concern for Upson and other officials, they said, was the sheer amount of land on the banks of the Lamoille River that disappeared into the waterway this week. It was the third severe storm in the past year — including heavy rain last December — to cause damage in the floodplain, they said.

“That’s why we feel like this one major rain event caused a lot of flooding — we don’t have the same amount of (flood) storage we had prior to last year,” Upson said.

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Still, Hardwick was far from completely shut down on Friday. Many stores were open for business, and traffic was rumbling through downtown. One passerby commented that she was surprised to see so many out-of-state license plates in a nearby parking lot.

Meanwhile, residents could get free water, cleanup materials and other goods at a supply center set up in the town’s police station. The center was staffed by volunteers from the local aid group Neighbor to Neighbor, which was originally created to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic but, since last summer, has taken on flood recovery work.

Six or seven people had stopped by the center to pick up materials since it opened on Thursday afternoon, according to Helen Beattie, one of the group members. She said she and her neighbors in nearby East Hardwick fared OK in the storm — largely, she thinks, because of their experience last summer.

“Every time, we should be getting better,” Beattie said. “I wish it wasn’t as frequent … but it is.”

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