(HOST) Commentator Tom Slayton, along with the entire city of Montpelier, is looking forward to spring – and back to the flood that didn’t happen.
(SLAYTON) This was the year of the flood that wasn’t.
The sandbags have been removed from downtown Montpelier and the Winooski has receded. A lot of water is still running west, toward Lake Champlain, but the ice has gone downriver. There’s no flood in Montpelier’s immediate future, and everyone in town is glad of that.
City officials started worrying in January that Montpelier might get inundated again, the way it did in 1992 when a surprise ice dam turned the waters of the Winooski into the downtown streets, causing a lot of damage and disruption. Nobody wanted a repeat performance.
And so in January, when the ice froze fast to the river bottom and it looked like another flood was likely, people started stuffing sandbags and puzzling over how to get the river ice to let go and purge downriver harmlessly.
For a while, nothing seemed to work. But there’s nothing like a disaster – even a potential disaster – to bring a community together. As ice-out time and threatening rainstorms approached, a team of volunteers was organized to stuff and distribute sandbags. Soon almost every downtown store and office had a mini-barracade on the sidewalk outside its front door. Piles of sandbags lay there like watchdogs, just waiting for the river to make its move.
City public works crews weren’t waiting, however. While the sandbags stood inert guard duty, they worked to try to get the ice moving. They sprayed quantities of dark material on top of the river’s big ice sheet to speed up its melting, and pounded holes in it with a heavy iron weight hoisted on a huge crane. But the weather stayed cold; the ice refused to budge.
The crisis came when a weekend of heavy rain was forecast, along with a warming trend, and the ice still firmly in place. But the weekend passed with sandbags stacked and the river still within its banks.
People began to make nervous jokes. The sandbags looked so nice, maybe they should just be left there permanently — Montpelier, the sandbag capital. At Capitol Grounds coffee shop, one of the little city’s nerve centers, the counter crew set up cups that encouraged people to “vote” – by tipping them – on whether or not a flood would happen! Capitol Grounds is located right next to the Winooski’s North Branch and it’s definitely in the flood zone, so there was an edge to the mock voting.
Another tense, rainy weekend came – and passed.
And then suddenly, it was all over. Late on a warm Sunday afternoon, the river ice finally gave up, let go – and washed all the way down to the Middlesex dam in a couple of hours.
“No Flood” was the news in the Times Argus, and it was good news.
Within a few days, the sandbags were gone, snow was rapidly disappearing, and Montpelier looked pretty much like any other Vermont town in April – a bit grimy and winter-weary, but ready for spring. There were redwings calling and even a few robins around.
The river, for its part, flowed quietly westward, making no commotion. It could afford to mind its manners – having once again reminded everyone in town precisely who was in charge.
Tom Slayton is editor-emeritus of Vermont Life magazine.