PLAINFIELD, Vt. (AP) — A second person has died in Vermont in the flooding of Remnants of Hurricane Beryl, officials said Thursday.
John Rice, 73, died when he drove his vehicle through a flooded street in Lyndonville early Thursday morning, police Chief Jack Harris said. Floodwaters swept the vehicle off the road and into a hayfield that was under 10 feet (3.05 meters) of water.
Rice had ignored warnings from bystanders to turn back, said Lt. Charles Winn of the Vermont State Police. Rice’s body was found several hours later after the floodwaters had receded.
Another man, identified as Dylan Kempton, 33, was driving an SUV late Wednesday night when it was swept away by floodwaters in Peacham, Vermont State Police said in a statement. His body was recovered Thursday morning.
The remnants of Hurricane Beryl dumped heavy rains on Vermont, washing away a large portion of an apartment building, blowing out bridges and cutting off towns, retraumatizing a state still recovering from the hurricane. catastrophic floods that took place exactly one year ago.
More than 100 people were rescued by swift-water crews during the worst of the rain, which began Wednesday and continued Thursday, officials said. In Plainfield, residents of a six-unit apartment building had just minutes to evacuate before floodwaters destroyed it, the city’s emergency management director said.
Stunned residents came out Thursday to survey the damage in a string of small towns along a hilly corridor of the Winooski River, much of which is connected by U.S. Highway 2. Parts of the artery were closed, along with dozens of other roads. Emergency shelters were opened in several communities.
“There’s mud everywhere,” said Art Edelstein, who surveyed the destruction of a Plainfield home he’s owned for 50 years. “This is, in my opinion, catastrophic. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The deluge dumped more than six inches of rain on parts of Vermont, with the heaviest rainfall in the same areas that were devastated on July 10, 2023, said Marlon Verasamy of the National Weather Service in Burlington. Rivers had crested in nearly all locations by late Thursday afternoon.
AP correspondent Jennifer King reports that Vermont is experiencing water damage from the remnants of Hurricane Beryl, which ravaged the northeastern United States.
“It is not lost on any of us how ironic it is that this flooding happened exactly one year ago, when many cities were impacted last year,” Gov. Phil Scott told reporters.
The towns hardest hit by Beryl’s rains are east of the capital Montpelier. The town was flooded last year, but this week no serious damage occurred.
In Plainfield, a concrete bridge collapsed and fell downstream, likely causing the destruction of a five-unit apartment building, said Michael Billingsley, the city’s emergency management director.
The occupant of another home was pulled through a window to safety just before the house was swept downstream. Also drifted away was a mobile home containing four pets belonging to a family that had barely escaped, he said.
Hilary Conant said she had to flee her apartment just as she had a year earlier when the Great Brook began to rise.
“It’s like going back to last year,” she said. “The water was coming up, so I knew it was time to take my dog and leave. It’s very traumatizing.” A neighbor offered a camper. She and her dog, Casper, offered shelter Thursday at Goddard College, which opened dormitories to displaced residents.
Around the corner from her house was the apartment building that collapsed. The front was still standing, but the rest was destroyed or gone. “It’s otherworldly,” she said. “It’s devastating.”
In tiny Moretown, the ruins looked worse than they did a year ago, and the school was damaged again, said Tom Martin, president of the city council. Workers hoped to install a temporary bridge Thursday to repair the main road into town.
“They say we’re ‘Vermont strong.’ We’ll get through this,” Martin said.
A police car crashed into a 30-foot (9.1-meter) embankment Wednesday night as the officer tried to avoid a utility pole and power lines blocking the road in Monkton, south of Burlington. The officer was not seriously injured, state police said.
Beryl, which has killed at least nine people in the U.S. and 11 in the Caribbean, made landfall in Texas on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, leaving millions of people in the Houston area without power. It then moved across the U.S. interior as a post-tropical cyclone that floods and sometimes tornadoes from the Great Lakes to Canada and northern New England.
Six tornadoes struck western New York on Wednesday, damaging homes and barns and uprooting trees, the weather service said. Some areas in the state received 4 or more inches (10 or more centimeters) of rain, which water flows through the streets in the village of Lowville.
Flash flooding also closed roads in several northern New Hampshire communities, including Monroe, Dalton, Lancaster and Littleton. Authorities there said 20 people were temporarily trapped at a Walmart store and rescuers had to bring water out of the area.
Resilience efforts appeared to be paying off in Vermont. Flood control dams performed “phenomenally,” with the exception of one dam that failed with minimal impact to property or roads, said Jason Batchelder, state environmental commissioner.
But the damage, which came as some residents are still waiting for federal disaster aid after flooding a year ago, was still a bitter pill to swallow.
“It’s hard to see people in your community suffering and having to go through this again,” said Thom Lauzon, the mayor of hard-hit Barre.
Although Vermont is not a coastal state, it does experience tropical weather. Tropical Storm Irene In 2011, 11 inches of rain fell on parts of Vermont in 24 hours. The storm killed six people in the state, washed homes off their foundations, and damaged or destroyed more than 200 bridges and 500 miles of highway.
In May, Vermont became the first state to introduce a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for some of the damage caused by extreme weather events due to climate change. Scott, a Republican, allowed the bill to become law without his signature, worried about the cost of a gruelling legal battle. But he recognized a need.
“Climate change is real,” Scott said Thursday. “I think we all have to accept that, regardless of your political persuasion, and deal with it, because we have to build back stronger, safer, smarter.”
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Associated Press reporters David Sharp in Maine, Holly Ramer in New Hampshire and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.