Our harrowing experience in the storm

 

 

                   

         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!