Sandbags, flooded basements, and more to come

I just spent the day navigating a long, clumsy loop from Saranac Lake over to Lake Placid then down the Ausable River valley.  Then down the shore of Lake Champlain.

I saw a landscape transformed by water.

These rivers haven’t just broken out of their banks, they’ve exploded.  I saw one stretch of the Ausable River where the woods on both sides were flooded for roughly half a mile.

Ausable Chasm looked like the spout of a fire hose.

And then there’s the Lake Champlain shore, where many towns have significant amounts of their waterfront districts half-submerged.

The ferry dock in Essex?  An island of stranded structures.   The Westport Marina?  I stood in the flooded dining room and it looked like a scene from Poseidon Adventure.

Everywhere I went, small groups of people were sandbagging, setting up concrete levies, and pumping basements.

The most dramatic scene?  A standing wall of water is throwing itself against the old stone buildings on the waterfront in Keeseville.

Amazing that those structures can withstand ten minutes of that punishment, let alone days of it.  I guess people knew how to build a foundation once upon a time.

One practical footnote:  travel through the mountains is difficult, with roads closed, long detours, and even the open routes often partially flooded with standing water.

If you can avoid setting off into that mess the next couple of days, that’s probably the better part of valor.

Tune in tomorrow morning during Morning Edition and the 8 O’clock Hour for reports from Saranac Lake, Potsdam, Keeseville, Essex and Westport.

Tags: flooding