In an earlier post we reported that Corwin and Priscilla’s house on the corner of the Kedron Brook and Cross Street behind the Woodstock Inn had been dramatically flooded over last Sunday. We can now report that the lovely, well-groomed, newly painted, beautifully garden-ed yellow house still stands intact. However, it has definitely been “breached” and “compromised” as have many in the neighborhood.
We ran into Corwin this morning on his way to work at the Billings Farm (It’s open!) and he stopped to ask that we let everyone know he and Priscilla are fine. The upstairs part of the house will be okay but the basement did get completely flooded with silt and brook water — it’s a mess — there is need for a new furnace, they did lose fuel oil and they’ve had to put in fans to air out the fumes, but overall these things can be fixed and eventually taken care of.
The entire Kedron Brook continues to smell strongly of fuel in small pools which come mainly from destruction wreaked all the way up Maple Street, Golf Avenue and down onto Cross Street.
There are eddies where the fuel has created small slicks. Just this morning Woodstock Early Bird had to forego the Community Business Meeting in order to address her own flood questions — the issue of whether we, in our building, might be leaking oil, too. Apparently not, since we took a walk upstream, up the bank and found these similar catchments of oil pretty much anywhere in the Kedron Brook where there are rocks or branches or indentations in the banks.
We, in this case, was Larry Weber,working for Dead River Company, who was called out and drove on down from Barnard to check out our situation. Thanks Larry! Thanks Dead River! The response time was terrific for what is probably a small problem relative to others. Larry, BTW, has been reconstructing a lot of furnaces!
Larry told us that even a few drops of fuel oil can create a long streaming “slick”. Also, Woodstock Early Bird asked State river officials earlier in the week if something could be done and they were honest in reporting that of all the mandates for what they have to do in this flood response, water quality gets kicked down the list. One neighborhood resident is wondering whether maybe having some boom available or brought in would be helpful?
Now to air quality: A Woodstock police officer said if you hang around the fumes too much you could get a headache. So don’t hang around the fumes too much. Staring at the little slicks and inhaling the air around them is not really a productive thing to do. More on this Kedron Brook situation as we know it.
Julia Carlisle
Woodstock Early Bird 