LYNDONVILLE, Vt. (WCAX) – Route 5, heading into downtown Lyndonville from the south was not passable Thursday morning. Submerged cars at a local autobody shop showed the depth of the deluge.
“Our hearts are broken for everybody in town here who has to deal with this, it’s very sad,” said Alan Brink, whose used car business next door was spared. “This whole street within an hour just flooded.”
Brink says other businesses north of downtown were also hit. “We have another shop in another town that flooded as well so all our cars up there are flooded,” he said.
To the south, Barnet also suffered a big blow. A huge washout surrounded the Barnet Village Store. A nearby Green Mountain Power hydroelectric plant was also knocked offline. Further downriver, two houses took the brunt of the silt and debris.
“I had gone to bed and my neighbor had called me and said water was running in his front door,” said Barnet resident Jon Carpenter, who spent Thursday morning digging out his car. He’s the chairman of the Barnet Fire District — which owns the village water system — and says about 200 residents are without water. “Priority one is to get my car out. Priority two — I am going to call the contractor to get him in to assess what it will take to get water back into the village.”
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Power was also down, which knocked Morrison’s Custom Feeds off-line. “Feed has got to roll out of here every day or animals are going to go hungry, so we really have no choice but to get power back,” said owner Earl Morrison. His crew worked to repair the damaged road so power crews could access lines and make needed repairs. “This is going to be very costly and very unfortunate, but as a community, we will help each other out and we will get patched back up and probably be stronger when we come back out of it.”