Brighton residents contend with damaged homes and roads after latest storm brought 7 inches of rain

BRIGHTON — On Tuesday morning, Lisa and Bill Moore returned home from their summer camp on Lake Willoughby after Bill’s mother, Maggie Morgan, who is in her 90s, called to say she couldn’t get out of her house, located next door to their own.

“We could tell she was panicking,” Lisa said. “We said, ‘we’ll be right there.’ And she says, ‘Well, you can’t get through the road.’”

The Moores navigated their way home through a neighboring lumber yard. Bill Moore used a boat to rescue his mother from her home.

“That’s my house,” Lisa said, gesturing to a yellow home a few feet away, which was surrounded by water. “It’s ruined.”

Water had ripped off their front porch, remnants of which lay across the flooded road. A potted plant lay sideways by her front door. When Lisa entered the house for the first time Tuesday morning, water came up to her mid-thigh, she said.

“Everything’s floating around in the house right now,” she said. “We’re still kind of in shock.”

Flash flooding hit several towns in the Northeast Kingdom on Monday night. According to the National Weather Service, St. Johnsbury received more than 8 inches of rain, and more than 7 inches fell on Brighton, which includes the village of Island Pond.

One meteorologist with the service called the event “ off the charts. ” The storm marks the fourth major flooding event Vermont has experienced since July of 2023.

In some areas of Brighton, small brooks became rivers with powerful currents. In others, including at the Moores’ property, water pooled and rose to damaging heights.

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Noah Bond, the town manager, said it’s hard to know how many homes the storm damaged. He warily eyed the forecast on his phone — the National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for much of central and northern Vermont, effective from Wednesday afternoon through Wednesday evening — and wondered whether additional rain would compound the damage.

Brighton experienced flood damage several weeks ago, when another extreme rain event caused widespread flooding.

That time, “we had enough contractors and staff to get things turned around in about 24 hours. Okay, so it was pretty quick,” Bond said. “This time was worse.”

He got a call from his road foreman, Andy Martin, at 3 a.m. Tuesday, he said. Floodwaters covered multiple roads until mid-afternoon, when the water began to recede. It destroyed one bridge, completely carved away some sections of road, visibly damaged driveways and covered lawns in mud.

The bridge is “going to be a very expensive fix,” Bond said, and at least a two-and-a-half week job on its own.

“I worry, with some of these floods, that some of this work is going to take an immense amount of time,” Bond said. “And I just don’t have an immense amount of staff. I have three road workers.”

Contractors who live in town have also offered to lend their services, he said, which helps, but the work is “nonstop.”

Selectboard members Heather McElroy and Jeanne Jervais guided traffic around closed roads near the Island Pond access area. Nearby, a resident, who declined to share her name with VTDigger, took stock of damage around her home, where a small brook that had morphed into a raging river the night before had carved deep grooves in her driveway.

“This is nothing compared to what other people — I mean, people have lost their homes this time around. Again,” she said. “It’s awful.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Brighton residents contend with damaged homes and roads after latest storm brought 7 inches of rain .