Inland Floods in Northeast May Be Irene’s Biggest Impact
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: August 29, 2011
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — As 5.5 million homes and businesses remained without power across the Eastern seaboard and blue skis and temperate breezes replaced what had been Hurricane Irene, a clearer picture of the storm’s devastation emerged Monday with inland communities in upstate New York and Vermont continuing to suffer the most acute consequences from river flooding.
While most eyes were warily watching the shore during Irene’s grinding ride up the East Coast, it was inland — sometimes hundreds of miles inland — that the storm’s most serious devastation actually occurred. And it was the water, not the wind, that was the major culprit.
In New York, the town of Prattsville has been washed away. In other areas, houses were swept from their foundations and one woman drowned on Sunday when an overflowing creek submerged the cottage where she was vacationing. Flash floods continued to be a concern into the afternoon on Monday.
In Vermont, people remained stranded with dwindling provisions of food and water after bridges collapsed and hundreds of roads remained under water. Swollen rivers continued to be a threat. And some two dozen emergency shelters were “chock full” of hundreds of people displaced from flooded homes, Gov. Peter Shumlin said.
“This is a really tough battle for us,” Mr. Shumlin said, after a helicopter ride from which he surveyed damage across the state. “What you see is farms destroyed, crops destroyed, businesses underwater, houses eroded or swept away and widespread devastation.”
He added, “This is a situation where we got dealt a very heavy blow and we’re a small rural state that doesn’t get tropical storms, so this is a real challenge for us.”
meaty article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/us/30vermont.html?_r=1&hp
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