(NECN: Jennifer Eagan, Lancaster, Mass.) - Route 117 in Lancaster, Mass., was closed Tuesday morning as heavy rains flooded the busy commuter road in the central part of the state. The road was expected to be opened later in the day.
Local residents say that the road flooding at this time of the year is fairly common.
Meanwhile, in Claremont, NH, and in Wallingford, Conn., flooding fears caused evacuations in the vicinity of swollen rivers.
Elsewhere in New England, Maine officials said four-seat Diamond DA-40, went
down near the Canadian border Monday afternoon, killing one person
and injuring another.
State wardens had to use snowmobiles to
respond to the area, where most of the logging roads hadn't been
plowed, said Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Public
Safety Department. A Canadian search and rescue helicopter reached
the site Monday night and airlifted the injured person to a
hospital in Canada.
Burlington, Vt., registered its
biggest March snowfall on record, at 25.8 inches as of Monday
night. In southern New England, flooding closed roads and cut off
neighborhoods as rain melted snow or fell on frozen ground with no
place to drain but overtaxed rivers.
A mudslide in Greenfield, Mass., forced at least two families
from their homes and buried cars, the Republican newspaper
reported. In Newport, N.H., an adult and three children had to be
rescued by boat when the Sugar River surrounded their home. The
Housatonic River near Oxford, Conn., swept parts of two homes and
two cars away, authorities said.
Local
The storm's severity shocked even the hardiest stock in New
England, where in a nod to the inevitable coming of spring after
one of the harshest winters in recent memory, stores had put grass
seed on display. Instead, as the second week of March began,
businesses closed and residents hunkered down yet again.
Amy Newman laughed about her disrupted routine as she struggled
down Main Street in Montpelier, Vt., pushing a three-wheeled
stroller and carrying her 3-year-old son, Wakeland.
"We tried going to the library, but it was closed," she said.
"Then we tried (popular local bakery) La Brioche, but it was
closed, too."
To the south, the weather was no laughing matter.
In Connecticut, flood warnings were issued for the Housatonic,
Farmington, Still and Naugatuck rivers. About a dozen homes were
evacuated in Danbury, and water was reported up to the first floors
of homes in one neighborhood. Authorities considered evacuating an
apartment complex for the elderly as water encroached.
Kent authorities reported that about 40 families in one area
were cut off from main roads and their homes were being evacuated.
In Southbury, officials reported more than two dozen evacuations,
several homes underwater and a few mudslides. A mobile home
reportedly was washed away after it was evacuated.
(Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.)
