Downtown Montpelier and Barre were underwater on Tuesday as the Winooski River and its tributaries exceeded their banks beyond levels seen during Tropical Storm Irene.

Officials in both Vermont cities closed the downtown areas until 3 p.m. so floodwaters could recede before residents and business owners returned to survey the damage.

As the rain ceased and rescue crews came to residents' aid, the breathtaking scale of the flooding was already setting in. Belinda Matheson, a custodian at Montpelier High School who lives in Northfield, came down to the southern side of the river to see her school underwater.



"Oh, my God," she yelled, as she first set eyes on the flooded campus. "My school!"

"They just put so much money into those fields!" she said as she took photos of the inundated grounds.

Matheson said she worried about the fate of the tennis courts, track, sports fields, school gardens and chicken coop. "All of it's gone," she said.
Capital city residents awoke on Tuesday to warnings from Montpelier officials that the Wrightsville Dam was nearing its capacity, which could send unprecedented amounts of water toward the city. But those fears appeared to abate as the morning wore on. The 115-foot dam was still more than three feet below its spillway as of 8 a.m., and discharge was "not expected," Mark Bosma, a public information officer for the state's emergency management office, wrote in an email.

In Barre, where more than seven inches of rain fell, residents paddled in kayaks on Main Street, steering around debris and vehicles that the swollen waters had lifted off the pavement. Several city blocks remained flooded on Tuesday morning, while receding waters revealed ripped-up, mud-encrusted streets.

Early on Tuesday, President Joe Biden, currently in Lithuania for a NATO summit, declared a state of emergency for every county in Vermont, which allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide disaster relief.

Vermont’s swift water rescue teams have performed more than 100 rescues, according to the state. Teams from Connecticut, Massachusetts and North Carolina are already assisting; others are also on the way. The Vermont National Guard is using helicopters to evacuate people from hard-hit and remote areas that are not accessible by boat.

Nick Bresette of the Montpelier Fire Department said teams had performed about a dozen rescues in the city so far. They retrieved one person who was trapped on a car roof, another who got stranded after driving into Winooski River floodwaters on North State Street on Monday night and a third who was having a cardiac issue.

"It's been a long night," Bresette said as he sipped coffee near the flooded Montpelier High School. Nearby, a swift water rescue team from New York pulled their inflatable boat out of the water after investigating a report of a family of five trapped on Elm Street.

Severe flooding was evident throughout the state on Tuesday. The post office in Johnson was under several feet of water, and roadways were washed out in the Richmond area. Southern Vermont was hit hard overnight into Monday, and residents and officials were busy digging out there.

Vermont courts were closed statewide. Services at Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin were "significantly impacted," hospital officials said. The emergency department remained open, but its outpatient dialysis unit and specialty practices were shuttered.

Gov. Phil Scott is scheduled to hold a press conference with other state officials at 11 a.m.

Kevin McCallum and James Buck contributed reporting.

This story will be updated.