MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (WCAX) – Over the last few days, Michael Cormier and his family watched the trees around their house in Middlebury fall like dominos. The latest fell Saturday morning.
“We were awake this morning having breakfast and just watching this big pine tree just teeter,” Cormier said.
Mid-bite of breakfast — the fall — Cormier’s wife, Cassie, said.
“It was just a deafening noise,” Cassie Santo said. “It made my stomach upset because I knew those chickens were all there underneath the tree.”
The chickens made it out alive, the tree falling mere inches from their coop. The family’s playground wasn’t so lucky, obliterated by another fallen tree Friday night.
The branches took down power lines too, causing intermittent outages. Next-door neighbor Brad Boise lost power all night, his second outage this week.
“On Tuesday we lost fourteen hours, I guess it was,” Boise recalled. “It’s kind of expected here. We get wicked wind right here at the base of the mountain.”
Cormier says the back-to-back storms left the neighborhood with more damage than it can handle alone.
“We’re leaning towards maybe let’s call homeowners and see if we can get the playground replaced, get a crew out here to handle all the downed trees,” Cormier said. “It’s become quite the operation for just ourselves.”
Further down Case Street, Frankie Hoover with Green Mountain Flagging directed traffic as a crew worked to restore power to hundreds of homes.
“It’s been a crazy week,” Hoover said. “I’ve been on this road all week pretty much. Every other day, it’s more trees coming down.”
Crews aren’t sure when they’ll be able to pack up, with many trees still tangled in power lines.
