Feeling The Power Of April Showers

By Andrew Gorosko

An intense nor’easter, which dropped between five and eight inches of rain on the area last Sunday and Monday, prompted First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal to declare a flood emergency on Monday morning, resulting in activation of the town’s emergency operations plan.

The town will seek federal aid to help cover costs for repairing an estimated $300,000 of damage to public property.

The town’s new Code Red emergency notification system placed thousands of automated recorded telephone calls to residents, alerting them that an emergency shelter would be open at Newtown Middle School on Queen Street, and that a number of local roads had been closed due to flooding.

As it turned out, no one needed to stay at the shelter, which was kept open from 2 pm Monday to 1 am Tuesday, said Emergency Management Director Bill Halstead.

Also, the town opened its emergency management center at the Sandy Hook Firehouse on Riverside Road from 12:30 to 5 pm Monday.

Joseph DelBuono, the town’s director of emergency communications, said the volume of fire calls that occurred due to the storm was the highest that he has experienced since starting in that post in 2001.

Meteorologist Rob Eisenson at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury said, “This was a very significant storm.” The slow-moving storm was very dynamic, dropping large volumes of rain on the area during a long period, he said.

The storm produced the heaviest rainfall in the area since Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999, he said. Most of the rain fell during a 24-hour period staring about 4 am Sunday, he said.

The high winds that were predicted for the area did not materialize, he said.

Mitch Gross, a spokesman for the Connecticut Light & Power Company (CL&P) said that the storm caused few electrical outages in Newtown. Only eight CL&P customers were without electrical service at 1:30 pm Monday, he said. There are more than 10,700 CL&P customers in Newtown.

Statewide, approximately 51,000 CL&P customers were without electrical service on Monday morning, he said. Most outages were in eastern Connecticut.

 The heavy rains resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of local basements becoming wet places. Between 5:50 pm Sunday and 7:30 pm Tuesday, local firefighters responded to 93 calls from residents for help in pumping water out of their basements. Two more pumping calls were responded to on Wednesday.

All five local volunteer fire companies responded to the calls at basements that had accumulated anywhere between a few inches and a few feet of water.

A dramatic incident during the storm involved an overflowing sluiceway for a small hydroelectric plant located at Rocky Glen Mill, a former factory at 75 Glen Road in Sandy Hook, which is now used as an office building.

The overflowing sluiceway, which was reported to Sandy Hook firefighters at 9:51 am Monday, resulted in more than 75 office workers being evacuated from the building and vehicles being moved out of a lower parking lot. The dam on the Pootatuck River there was not affected by the sluiceway problem.

Pootatuck River water is diverted from an impoundment behind that dam to a sluiceway, which feeds the hydroelectric turbine. Excess water in the sluiceway flooded over an embankment and then cascaded down a terraced area, carrying mud and rocks with it. The silt-laden water found its way into the lowest level of the office building containing finished office space, said Mr Halstead, who also is Sandy Hook’s fire chief.

The building was evacuated in the event that the embankment surrounding the sluiceway should fail. But the structure remained intact and workers were allowed to return to their offices that afternoon.

Firefighters had placed sandbags along the southeast corner of the office building in an effort to prevent water from entering the structure.

State Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spokesman Dennis Schain said a DEP dam inspector checked the premises on Monday and approved making temporary repairs to strengthen the embankment near the sluiceway, which received severe erosion damage in the incident.

At 12:24 am Tuesday, Sandy Hook firefighters returned to Rocky Glen Mill for another incident of water washing out of the overfilled sluiceway, Chief Halstead said.

Temporary repairs were made at the site this week.

Flooded Basements

Sandy Hook firefighters were very busy on Monday, responding to numerous calls to pump out flooded basements, Chief Halstead said. The water depths they encountered ranged from about one inch to five feet, he said.

On Monday, the five local fire companies responded to a total 76 calls for help in pumping out basements.

On Tuesday, a bright yellow wet suit was being dried inside the Newtown Hook & Ladder Firehouse on Main Street. A firefighter had used that wet suit to wade through a flooded basement in a Main Street home that held water four feet deep, said Fire Chief Ray Corbo. The firefighter opened a window in the basement to allow a suction hose to suck water out of the structure, the fire chief said.

The busiest period for Hook & Ladder firefighters was between 6 pm Sunday and 6 pm Monday. Of the 34 calls during that period, 28 calls involved pumping out basements, he said. The calls were scattered through the fire district with a concentration of calls in the vicinity of Boggs Hill Road, he said.

The flooded basements typically held water that ranged between five inches and ten inches deep. In some cases, firefighters returned to basements to pump them out a second time.

Chief Corbo expects that many people who had wet basements did not call the fire companies because they used their own pumps to remove the water.

In several cases, firefighters shut off natural gas service in basements before starting to pump. The water problems resulted in some affected homes losing their hot water service, heat, and electrical service, he said.

In one case, rising water in basement at 8 Dogwood Terrace caused an electrical fire in a motor for an oil-fired furnace at about 9:18 am on Monday, he said.

Of Hook & Ladder’s efforts in the storm, Chief Corbo said, “We’ve got a good group of guys here. They’re very dedicated.”

A town road crew used a large water vacuum truck to pump out a flooded Hawley School basement on Church Hill Road, where a plugged drain had caused the water to back up inside the basement.

Botsford Fire Chief Wayne Ciaccia said, “A lot of flooded basements were pumped out, a lot of basements.” Chief Ciaccia said Botsford fire crews pumped out almost 20 basements scattered throughout the Botsford fire district.

In some cases, the water in basements was three to four feet deep, but more typically it was 18 inches to 24 inches deep, he said. The flooding caused extensive damage to furnaces and water heaters, he said.

Hawleyville Fire Captain Dave Jossick said Hawleyville firefighters pumped out about a dozen flooded basements. Calls included trips to Taunton Hill Road, Pond Brook Road, Obtuse Road, Great Hill Road, and Saw Mill Road, he said.

“It was just a constant barrage,” he said of the continuing calls for basements to be pumped out.

Dodgingtown Fire Captain Joe Masso said Dodgingtown firefighters responded to numerous pumping calls.

“It was outrageous,” he said, noting that it was the busiest period for fire calls that he has experienced in his eight years as a volunteer firefighter.

The calls came in so often that firefighters were delayed in responding to them, but were eventually able to get to all locations where help was requested, he said.

Also, at 4:13 am on Monday, volunteer firefighters responded to a report of a house fire at 20 Main Street. (See related story.)

Later on Monday morning, a Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps ambulance reportedly was delayed while transporting a patient to Danbury Hospital, when the ambulance encountered a closed, flooded Newtown Road near Wal-Mart in Danbury.

 

Road Trouble

Public Works Director Fred Hurley said the storm caused many washouts on public roads and private property.

Dirt roads that were damaged by the flooding included Pond Brook Road, Ox Hill Road, Town’s End Road, Beaver Dam Road, Point O’ Rocks Road, and Deep Brook Road.

In many areas, water washed over the top of paved roads, damaging them and in some cases requiring temporary closures.

Other roads affected by the heavy rains were Old Hawleyville Road, Putnam Drive, Jordan Hill Road, Boggs Hill Road, Key Rock Road, Hattertown Road, Lakeview Terrace, Pond Brook Road, Castle Hill Road, Taunton Hill Road, Hopewell Road, Obtuse Road, Taunton Lake Road, Turkey Hill Road, Edmond Road, Tamarack Road, Sanford Road, and Hanover Road.

The storm flooded the road at the bridge at the bottom of Turkey Hill Road, which provides the only access to residents on that road and Nearbrook Road, Mountain View Drive, and Turkey Hill Terrace. The town is in the process of developing an alternate right of way into the neighborhood, via an easement it has received from a private landowner so that future storms won’t isolate the neighborhood.

Mr Hurley said the town has been using two road graders in working the repair damage caused by the storm.

The town road crew made fast temporary repairs following the storm and will now have to make long-term repairs to the roadways, he said.

Mr Hurley estimated that the long-term road repairs will cost between $200,000 and $300,000 to accomplish. It remains unclear how much road damage the storm caused, he said. Some of that damage has not yet become apparent, he said.

More than a dozen roads were impassable during the storm, he said. Some of those roads, though, were passable by emergency vehicles, he added.

Last weekend’s storm caused more widespread water damage locally than did Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999, Mr Hurley said.

Mr Rosenthal estimated that the storm caused approximately $300,000 damage to town property, largely involving road damage.

Mr Rosenthal said that local volunteer firefighters worked hard to deal with the problems posed by the storm and should be commended for their efforts.

Also, the town road crew worked hard to handle the problems posed by water running over local roads, he said.

Wells And Septic Systems

Newtown Health Director Donna Culbert reported that her office did not received any reports of contaminated wells or failed septic systems as a result of the flooding. “If wells or septics have been affected, the property owners may not feel the effect or report it to us for days, if at all.”

She said wells could be contaminated by bacteria if they were submerged by floodwaters; however, a homeowner may not see or taste the contamination and will only know if they test.

The health director said she also spoke with personnel at Newtown’s wastewater treatment plant off Commerce Road about the impact of the storm. They reported that the plant had no problems during the storm.