Repair Priorities Need to be Set

By Layla Kalinen
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
BURLINGTON, VT — Just days after catastrophic flooding in Vermont, both President Joe Biden and Vermont Gov. Phil Scott have announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is on the ground to help the state recover from what, according to meteorologist Peter Benakis at the Burlington office of the National Weather Service, was flooding worse than Hurricane Irene in 2011.

On Tuesday, Benakis gave an overview of flood threats that are much less severe than last week.

“Montpelier and Barre, Vt., both had a very severe flooding last Monday, but there’s been road washouts throughout much of the state and we’ve even had some landslides. That is something in the 18 years I’ve been working here we haven’t dealt with before,” Benakis said.

Barre and Montpelier, according to Benkis, weathered better during tropical storm Irene.

“As an indication of the severity of some of these floods, I think holes and landslides… are not something we’ve dealt with before. So, it is pretty widespread and in some areas it’s worse than Irene,” Benakis said. “The recent benchmark is the 2011 tropical storm Irene and places like Montpelier and Barre were hit harder in this event than they were in Irene.”

The Winooski River suffered as much as the Black River and Williams River in Windsor and Windham counties, he said.

“On the Winooski River, it’s been a continuation since last Monday and we’ve had probably four separate events now. Killington was hit hard on July 7 and then statewide on July 9, and then last Thursday we had more flooding and then Sunday we had more flooding,” Benakis said. “But, the most severe was July 10 in Windsor County. The Okemo Mountain had a landslide that went right into the Okemo Marketplace and that was early during pre-dawn hours on July 10.

Benakis reported that the larger rivers were less treacherous as of Tuesday afternoon.

“Right now, the Winooski River is at about 7-feet and flood stage is 15-feet, so it’s well below flood stage and we’re not expecting any additional river flooding right now,” Benakis said. “What we’re looking at is the thunderstorms today will produce locally heavy rain and what we call flash flooding where we just get flooding in small creeks and sometimes coming out of the hills that produce road washouts and things like that. It’s not really a river flood threat for today. We’re looking at more of a flash flood threat with the stronger thunderstorms producing torrential downpours.”

Benakis said the National Weather Service in Burlington covers from the Canadian border to the tail end of Windham County.

“We cover all of central and northern Vermont and then the southern two counties of Bennington and Windham are covered by our office down in Albany, New York,” Benakis said. “You’ll find [flooding] was very widespread. It was anywhere from Londonderry and Ludlow northward, especially on the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains, all the way up to Barre and Montpelier, which were hit hard and then further north in the Memorial River Valley. That area was hit hard as well as all the way from Cambridge and Jeffersonville westward to Hardwick were very hard hit in those areas and then in the Northeast Kingdom we had quite a bit of road washouts.”

Benakis said the severity of these hard rains trumped Irene with and impacts on roads were widespread, meaning priorities will have to be set.

“It’s very widespread and it’s not just like it’s one or two towns and the major roads come first,” he said. “U.S. Route 4 was closed east of Rutland over to the Woodstock area. That is where it washed out parts of Route 4 and so that was a priority because it’s such a major route down in South Central Vermont. They prioritize and obviously assess the larger roads given towns and things they prioritize for heavily populated and traveled areas.”