BARTONSVILLE, Vt. – By the time Susan Hammond came downstairs at 9 a.m. the rain was falling hard. Standing on the back deck with Sunday coffee in hand, she looked down the hill and through the trees to where the usually lazy Williams River powered over rocks, loud enough to compete with the din of Tropical Storm Irene’s downpour.
Inside, Hammond pulled up a chair to her computer to check the water level at a gauge just downriver: 4 1/2 feet, nearly doubled from the night before, but well below flood stage. For peace of mind, though, Hammond reached for an umbrella and headed down the road to pay her hamlet’s 141-year-old covered bridge a call.
Even by Vermont standards, Bartonsville’s bridge was out of the ordinary, a 159-foot expanse of brown boards weathered to a distinguished gray, with rectangular windows revealing a thick skeleton of criss-cross latticework. Standing under umbrellas just beyond the bridge’s portal, Hammond and her neighbors traded talk of the storm, before she headed back to the house.
Around 11, she checked the river gauge again: 8 feet. Flood stage. When she went down to check on the bridge, just a few feet separated its boards from the water.
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