By Reginald Johnson
Many towns
in western Connecticut are still reeling from the torrential downpour that hit
last Sunday, which unleashed massive flooding --- sweeping away homes,
collapsing roads and killing two people.
The storm,
which some officials are calling a “thousand-year storm” brought three months
worth of rain in the space of a few hours. Towns like Monroe and Oxford and Newtown
got 12-15 inches of rain. Incredible. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/weather-news/stories/sundays-massive-rainfall-may-have-been-most-in-connecticut-history-nws/3367349/
We were
caught up in this storm and had a harrowing experience trying to get home. My
wife works in Newtown and she had an appointment on Sunday with a client and we
had to drive to her office. We knew that there was rain and a flood warning out
there but it was supposed to be ending by 1:30 so we thought it was safe to
drive from where we live in Bridgeport.
There was no rain when we left Bridgeport, but by
the time we got to Newtown there was a steady rainfall and the sides of the
roads had small rivers of water along the sidewalks. My wife finished with her
client in an hour and it looked outside like things were clearing a bit, and we thought
everything was going to be okay going home. The client, Lorena, lived in
Newtown and she mentioned that if we had any issues we should call her and we could come to her
house. We didn’t think that was going to be necessary. But we were in for a
surprise.
We drove up
Church Hill Road from Sandy Hook and were just going over the top towards the
Blue Colony Diner below and suddenly we saw that the road was blocked ahead
because of flooding. No cars were moving through. And then a shock --- we looked
over on the right and saw cars that were submerged in water in a parking lot
down at the base of the hill! That’s when we knew that we should have taken
that flood warning more seriously.
My wife said
though, there was another way on a back road to get to 25 heading south to
Bridgeport. We got on that, went through a pool of water with a lot of other
cars but we made it through and we got to 25. Now we thought we were home free to head south.
But not so fast. We got up to the Stop & Shop store which is in the south
end of Newtown and there was a huge flood and cars were halfway submerged in water. Many cars were backed up and people were just sitting there, most
likely wondering like we were, what do we do now?
After that we turned around and I said maybe some of
these pools of water would start going down, since rain had let up. So we thought
we’ll just kill some time by going to grocery store and pick up some food, thinking that possibly we might have to spend the night in her office if we
couldn’t get home.
After an hour
or so, we tried another back road but there was another blockage and a car was stuck in the water. Meanwhile another alert came over the phone saying
there was a flood watch to 7:30. Things were getting anxious and our nerves
were on edge. We turned around, hoping to get back to the office, thinking we
would spend the night.
But no luck. The flood water on Church Hill
Road had not gone down and now there was a police barrier. That’s when we thought
we would have to spend the night sitting in a parking lot in back of CVS.
I had flashes of my childhood when there was a
horrific storm in Connecticut called Hurricane Diane in 1955 and people
throughout the Naugatuck Valley and many other towns in western Connecticut
were stranded in their cars or homes and had to be rescued. Many could not be
and over 90 lives were lost. Homes were swept away and bridges washed out.
It was at
that point we decided we had to call Lorena and take her up on her offer. She told
us the roads to go on that were still not blocked and we were able to get to
their house. Thank goodness! It was like finding a safe harbor.
We spent some time there and were able to
relax a bit. Then Mike, Lorena’s husband, came out and said he’d heard that
there was more more rain on the way and we better get going. He knew a back
road that was still clear that would take us around the bottleneck on Route 25
and get us home. We jumped in our car, followed him and he led us to around the
problem areas and to a clear area of 25 near Monroe. We thanked him so much and
we went our way. There was some water in Monroe but we managed to get through
it and then got into Trumbull and then Bridgeport, (where there really hadn’t
been too much rain), and finally home. Thank you, lord.
It was a very
unnerving experience but while I was frazzled by it all, I realized
looking at the news later that night and then in the morning that what we went
through was not that bad, compared to what a lot of other people in the
Valley and nearby towns like Oxford and Southbury went through. People had to
be rescued by the fire department when they got stranded by the floodwater. Homes
were washed away or severely damaged. And tragically two women in Oxford were
killed when they were swept away by the flash floods. So overall we were lucky.
All I know
now is whenever you get an alert on your cell phone that there’s a flood
warning you better follow it, because these storms can get bad quickly and they
can produce a tremendous amount of water in a very short period of time and it
can become hazardous or even life threatening.
I also have
to comment that these types of heavy rainstorms, or violent windstorms as well
that are knocking down a lot of trees, are becoming more frequent. They appear
to be a product of climate change and global warming. We really have to heed
the scientists and do all we can to at least slow down this phenomenon. We can’t
stop it altogether but at least we can slow it down and manage the effects in a
safer way.
Stay alert!
