HALLOWELL – Tim Plumer points to a dark mark a couple of inches below the top of the door at the front of his Water Street antique shop. The mark shows how high water from the Kennebec River rose two decades ago.
“There was a silt mark there, so I know,” said Plumer, sitting amid an assortment of model trains, race car sets and other collectibles in his shop in this small riverside city next to Augusta.
Raging torrents ripped out bridges and tore out roads, snatched houses off their foundations and washed them away when the April Fools’ Day Flood blindsided Maine 20 years ago Sunday. At least one person died as a result of the floods.
With the ground still frozen and the snowpack unable to absorb any more water, runoff from an intense two-day rainstorm at the end of March quickly filled streams flowing into major rivers. By April 1, much of the state was awash. Hundreds of families abandoned their homes and headed for higher ground.
Flood waters also swept across New Hampshire, where 1,500 people were evacuated and three feet of silt were left behind on the playing fields at Plymouth State College. But it was Maine that was hardest hit.
More than 150 homes were destroyed and another 1,800 were damaged. Businesses were wiped out, and hundreds of people’s lives were turned upside down for weeks as the state wrung itself out, mopped up and rebuilt.
Damages in Maine were estimated at $100 million, according to a University of Maine Land and Water Resources Center report, but the total damages may never be known. It ranked among Maine’s worst floods, and certainly the most destructive recorded in the Kennebec basin, said Lynette Miller of the Maine Emergency Management Agency.
In riverside cities and towns, people navigated streets in canoes and fishing boats as water lapped at the eaves of some houses. In the country, high water encircled some homes, creating little islands. More than a dozen cows drowned when the Sandy River flooded in New Sharon.
Lumber, raw timber, fuel storage tanks and even homes floated down rivers.
“You can never really put a price on the disruption that happens in people’s lives,” Miller said. “Nothing is ever really the same after something like this happens.”
The state is much better prepared today than it was two decades ago for floods of that magnitude, said Miller, MEMA’s special projects director.
County emergency management agencies are better organized, and some counties have organized river watchers to keep an eye on changing conditions, Miller said.
The River Flow Advisory Commission, consisting of experts from federal and state agencies and hydroelectric dam owners, has been more active and plays a more public role in monitoring rivers during flood season.
The U.S. Geological Survey has 54 stream-flow gauges, nine more than before the big flood. But the real improvement is that the gauges now produce real-time data that’s accessible on the Web, said USGS hydrologist Greg Stewart. Likewise, snow survey maps have improved greatly and are Web-accessible, he said.
The Internet is also playing a growing role in keeping people better informed than they were before the last storm hit.
In his Dunkinfields Antiques shop, a keyboard Plumer keeps at arm’s length enabled him to access a Web site showing how fast the water is flowing at dams upstream, giving him an advance look at whether high water is headed his way.
“When it rains a lot here and there’s a snowpack up north, you know it’s gonna go,” said Plumer, who recalled helping a tenant in what’s now his shop move equipment out before the floodwaters hit in 1987, and neighbors sandbagging around nearby rowhouses.
Flooding is not unusual in New England. The devastating floods of October 2005 are still fresh in the memories of New Hampshire residents.
Torrential rains carried away homes, washed miles of road down to bedrock and killed seven people in the southwestern part of the state. In Alstead, N.H., the hardest-hit community, 36 homes were destroyed and 50 damaged.
Seven months later, on Mothers’ Day weekend, more heavy rains prompted more flooding. Though not as devastating in single communities as the October floods, rising water hit a much wider area through southern and central New Hampshire. It destroyed 25 homes, damaged 5,000 others and washed away farm fields and roads.
In Vermont, March 11, 1992, is another date to remember for floods. Jet Skis cruised down Montpelier’s Main Street and people canoed past the Statehouse when an ice jam forced the Winooski River to overflow its banks. The flood did more than $5 million in damage.
The National Weather Service says flooding in November 1927 was the “greatest disaster in Vermont history.” Rainfall over the first six days of that month produced flooding statewide, killing 84 people, including the lieutenant governor at the time.
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On the Net:
River Flow Advisory Commission: www.maine.gov/rfac/
National Weather Service, Northeast River Forecast Center: www.erh.noaa.gov/er/nerfc/
Maine Emergency Management Agency: www.maine.gov/mema/
U.S. Geological Survey, Augusta: http://me.water.usgs.gov/
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