Vermont residents battled epic flooding Monday after the remnants of Hurricane Irene set off the state's worst deluge in more than 80 years, washing out roads, knocking out power and forcing hundreds into shelters.
At least two people were killed in the mountainous, land-locked New England state, which rarely sees tropical storms. A dozens towns were cut off.
Homes and businesses were flooded after 7 inches of rain inundated the state from Irene, which had been reduced to a tropical storm by the time it reached Vermont on Sunday. Floodwaters gushed through downtown Brattleboro, an artsy community of 12,000 along the Connecticut River.
Along the East Coast, many of the worst effects arose from rains that fell inland, not the highly anticipated storm surge along the shores. Winds also added to the damage by sending trees into powerlines, homes and vehicles.
| Power outages due to Irene | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| At 8 a.m. ET Monday | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy |
Hardest hit were New York state with 938,000 (12 percent of all customers); Connecticut with 693,000 (44 percent); New Jersey with 693,000 (20 percent) Virginia with 615,000 (19 percent); Massachusetts with 567,000 (19 percent).
In addition, Rhode Island saw 64 percent of its customers, 274,000 homes and businesses, without power.
During the course of Irene, 7.4 million customers lost power — nearly double the outages from the last hurricane to make landfall in the United States in 2008.
In Vermont, even though the sun was out on Monday, officials worried that more damage could still be done.
"The bigger rivers haven't crested yet because the smaller brooks feed into them," Gov. Peter Shumlin said Monday morning.
Irene left millions without power across much of the Eastern Seaboard, was blamed for at least 35 deaths and forced airlines to cancel more than 12,000 flights .
It never became a big-city nightmare, but in more rural areas, rivers and creeks turned into raging torrents tumbling with tree limbs and parts of buildings.
Video: Tips for filing flood claims
The National Weather Service issued flood warnings early Monday for rivers in New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and Virginia.
A river gauge for the Connecticut River at Montague, Mass., showed it had risen by about 25 feet between 6 a.m. Friday and 6 a.m. ET Monday.
50,000 without power in Vermont
In Vermont, authorities warned of possibly disastrous flooding in the days ahead, with Shumlin saying his state was facing "a full-blown flooding catastrophe."
Some 50,000 residents were without power, officials said on Monday.
Kevin Putnam, 45, was busy pumping out the basement of his parents' home in Brattleboro on Monday, after the floodwaters had risen almost to their first-floor windows. "It was scary, there were giant boulders bouncing down the brook," Putnam said.
After evacuating his parents from the home on Sunday, he returned to save their 15-year-old cat, Sophie, swimming across the backyard to do so. "She's the meanest cat ever, but I had to do it," Putnam said.
"It was amazing," said Dan Ireton, a 61-year-old musician. "You could hear the trees cracking. One cracked and then the lights went out, and we said, 'That was our power.'"
Several of the state's historic covered bridges were washed away.
In Woodstock, a water main break left the town without water coming from faucets and toilets but with plenty gushing through the streets.
The Simon Pearce glass blowing studio in Quechee, which draws power from the Ottaquechee River, was flooded and the historic bridge leading to the studio, store and restaurant was teetering.
"It is complete mayhem up here," a spokesman at the Woodstock police department said.
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