Pumps shot water out of flooded homes along River Trail in Southbury on Monday night, but nowhere nearly as quickly as the swollen Pomperaug River water came in, filling basement in minutes.
“I’ve been here my whole life (and) I’ve never seen this kind of water come down through,” Southbury Volunteer Fire Chief Rick Lyle said.
Southbury firefighters spent Monday night helping homeowners clean up. Overnight, they were rescuing trapped homeowners on River Trail.
“They ended up getting us out of here by payloader. It was very scary, very scary,” resident Joanne Jorge said.
Connecticut Light & Power crews checked to make sure the homes were safe before restoring power where they could.
In the meantime, the Hettenbechs stayed warm in their minivan.
“We were lucky enough to move most of the valuable stuff out earlier but there is some stuff that’s going to be missed,” Steve Hettenbech said.
Pumps were also pushing out water in Naugatuck. Firefighters received 50 calls for help from flooded homes like this one.
“I don’t know if was from the sand (or) from the snow, but it wasn’t draining and it was starting to back up,” said Jim Pesillo, a homeowner who had 8 inches of water in his basement.
All the flooding in Naugatuck wasn’t from an overflowing river, but simply too much rain and snowmelt.
“It’s been warm and everything is melting now. You look around, all the snow banks are gone today. So it’s going somewhere and ending up in a lot of basements,” Naugatuck Fire Lt. Greg Flaherty said.
