Assistant Fire Chief Paul Goyette helps a stranded 13-year-old boy get off a boulder in the middle of Tophet Brook. The boy became stranded after swimming at the Big Basin swimming hole and had to be rescued by members of the Adams Police Department and Alert Hose Company. (Photo submitted by Jean King)
By Meghan Foley
Posted: 07/31/2009 02:15:31 AM EDT
HANCOCK -- A lightning strike and subsequent house fire at approximately 3:20 p.m. Wednesday was only the beginning for the Hancock fire department, as heavy rains battered the area through Thursday morning.
Fire Chief David Rash said Thursday the department hadn’t even cleared the fire on Whitman Road when the calls started coming in about flooded streets and basements in the town’s village area.
"It has just been too much water too quickly," he said, while standing inside the Taylor Memorial Library on Main Street.
The library was one of several buildings along Hancock Road (Route 43) and Main Street with flooded basements as a result of several inches of rain falling within hours.
According to the National Weather Service in Albany, rainfall totals from Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning in the cities of North Adams and Pittsfield were each less than three inches.
"Some areas of Berkshire County probably got half a foot of rain this week, which is usually more than what it can get in a month," said Hugh Johnson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y.
Known as a Bermuda High, the high-pressure area over the southeast coast combined with a strong jet stream over the region to keep the area warm, wet and humid.
Rash said that last time a lot of rain was dumped on the town in a small amount of time was in the 1990s, and the damage was similar.
Besides
flooded basements, the heavy rain on Wednesday and Thursday caused creeks and brooks in Hancock to swell and in some cases spill onto Hancock Road by the Jericho Valley Inn, Kittle Road and Madden Road.
"Last night there was standing water in almost every house in town. The culverts can’t handle it, and the water starts backing up and finds other ways to go," Rash said.
One of the places the water went was along the side of Madden Road instead of under it, making the mountain road impassable.
Ernie and Carole LeBarron have lived on Madden Road since 1969, and the only other time they saw similar damage from heavy rains was in 1976.
"We’re use to getting snowed in up here, but we’re not use to getting rained in," Ernie LeBarron said.
He said the brook coming down the mountain was moving so fast it took boulders and other debris with it, which clogged up the culvert near their house sending the brook down the side of the road.
Stephen and Diana Harrington, who live below the LeBarron’s, invited them to park their cars in the Harrington’s driveway.
"They’re getting to be a parking lot down there," Carole LeBarron said.
Work crews from Condron Construction, of Lanesborough, began fixing Madden Road Thursday morning.
Diana Harrington said after about two hours of rain Wednesday afternoon, she and her husband went outside and it was "like Niagra Falls coming off the mountain."
Her husband, Stephen, said the brook next to their property is usually dried up by the end of July, and on Wednesday night, they could hear boulders tumbling down it and hitting against each other.
"I’m quite surprised it rained as much has it did," he said.
While John and Betsy Lynch were able to make it up Madden Road Wednesday to their house, getting there from Westchester County in New York State was challenging.
"We had to ignore all the ‘road closed’ signs to get home," she said.
One road closure sign they couldn’t ignore was a bridge crossing a stream on Route 22 in Stephentown, N.Y.
Mike Gray, construction supervisor with the New York State Department of Transportation, said the temporary bridge crossing the brook was washed out Wednesday night, and work crews were in the process of fixing it Thursday afternoon.
"Hopefully if everything goes right, we’ll have the bridge opened tomorrow [Friday] night," he said.
The temporary bridge was installed earlier this year so the permanent bridge could be replaced. Gray said that work is suppose to be completed in mid-October.
Besides a bridge being washed out, Stephentown also experienced significant flooding at the intersection of Routes 22 and 43 and along Route 43 through the town. A culvert overflowed washing out Route 43 just west of the fire station making it impassable.
"We’ve been working around the clock. Several streams are still swollen. We are still doing pump-outs, which began about 36 hours ago," Rich Burgess, chief of the Stephentown Volunteer Fire Department, said Thursday afternoon.
Rensselaer County declared a state of emergency in Stephentown and Nassau following the rain storm.
Burgess said some families have been displaced from their homes, but are staying with family members.
"It’s just quite a mess," he said.
Brian Baker, a Stephentown attorney, spent Thursday getting three and a half to four feet of water in the basements of three apartment buildings he owns pumped out.
"The water table is so high ... you pump the water out, and it goes right back in," he said.
For the 22 to 23 years Baker has had his law offices in town, this was the worst flooding he had seen.
"It has been absolutely crazy. You drive five miles away and life is wonderful. Here it’s like being in a war zone and nobody knows it," he said.
Waubeeka Golf Links in Williamstown and the Lebanon Valley Speedway in New Lebanon, N.Y. also sustained significant flooding.
The flooding turned the Speedway’s drag racing strip into a lake, and left trailers and other vehicles resting in a few feet of water.
As of Thursday evening no upcoming races had been canceled.
Mark J. Mills, general manager of Waubeeka Golf Links on New Ashford Road in Williamstown, said the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh holes on the golf course got flooded after the Green River breached at the seventh hole.
The gold course was closed Thursday, will be closed Friday, and a decision will be made Friday afternoon whether they will open on Saturday, he said.
Elsewhere in the county, Great Barrington had issues not only with flooding near the Rudolf Steiner School and the area of West Plain Road, but also with mosquitoes.
Aside from standing water, Becket reported some gravel road washouts and a few trees down. Richmond continued to sustain road damage from the latest rains, undermining the existing damage they caused on Monday night.
In Pittsfield, passersby stopped to gawk at the incalculable flooding that occurred in the parking lot and land surrounding Wahconah Park. Though the baseball field itself was relatively dry, the area outside its walls was submerged under several feet of dark, muddy water.
As of Thursday, there were no more baseball games scheduled at Wahconah Park, home of the Pittsfield American Defenders of the New England Collegiate Baseball League.
Sophie Maguire and Jenn Smith of The Berkshire Eagle contributed to this report.
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