Tales from the Woods: The Flood

By Bob Chapin

You can learn about rivers flooding from the TV or newspaper articles but until you personally experience a flood you can be excused for not appreciating the power and impact a river has when it overflows its banks.

Bob Chapin

As I have mentioned in previous articles, we were fortunate that our parents owned a summer cabin in Birchbank on Lake Housatonic, in Shelton, Connecticut created by the Stevenson and Derby dams on the Housatonic River. For the most part the river was placid and rarely moved up or down a foot or so all year depending upon rainfall and the demand for hydroelectric power. That was until the summer of 1957.

That year we, and all of the watershed throughout the valley, had lots of summer rain. The ground was super saturated. The entire river system had lots of dams on it and they were there, in large part, to help regulate the flow of water, to allow a gradual release to prevent flooding, and let the water make its way safely to Long Island Sound.

For the most part it worked well. However, toward the end of the summer of 1957, the watershed could not tolerate the amount of rainwater falling and the independently operated dam monitors began releasing water to prevent flooding in their neck of the woods. By being above the last dam before the sound, the dams above shed water to relieve their pressure, and it accumulated above the Derby dam, and our lake began to rise.

The water level was 20 to 30 feet up on our lawn when my dad began talking about maybe evacuating. There was still 200 feet or so before the water would reach the camp, so we all thought we were safe. I recall his wading down to where we tied up our rowboat and he moved the boat from the dock, (which was already under water and floating off its supports), and tied it to a tree at the shoreline.

About 3 a.m. we had a knock on the door, and it was a first responder who was telling us that we had to evacuate. We hurriedly packed up our clothes and pet cats and drove out through lower lying areas already filling with water.

There was only one road into and out of this area and it ran alongside a railroad track. The road ran behind most of the cabins then climbed steeply up a hillside before running by a State Park that was already under water. The winter went by before we drove back to the cabin the following spring.

The sight we saw upon returning to the cabin made our hearts sink. There was no sign at all of the rowboat or the canoe we had.

Ours was the last property in a line of 40 to 50 upstream properties that all had large lawns down to the water and we had a line of “woods” or trees that began on the downstream edge of our property from the cabin to the water. What that meant was that the trees became a huge strainer catching everything that came downstream.

Our 200-foot wide lawn was completely covered with every imaginable piece of driftwood, lawn chairs, dock parts, broken boats and canoes, anything that could float came down river and stopped at our lawn. In the end, the river had risen all the way to the cabin and 17 inches deep into the cellar.

We spent the next two summers cleaning up the mess and trying to get the grass to grow, which would take yet another summer. The good news is that we had all the firewood we would ever need as long as we cut it up and stacked it for later use. Thoughtfully, our boat and canoe were found intact downstream and returned to us.

When I read stories about floods in other parts of the country and overseas, I am now a lot more sympathetic to the plight of the residents affected by these floods. <