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Monday, I was able to make it into the town of Bethel which is about a mile and a half
or so and from there we had to walk in because all of the bridges in all directions were
out. And from there, we statted picking fish up off our parking lot, out of new ponds that
were created in the trees, and there were fish in the raceways where we hadn’t had
fish before. So it was just a big mess here. A lot of sludge and mud and stuff had filled
our ponds there, it was basically like chocolate milk.
Since the 29th or the 28th, I believe, when we had that hurricane, the hatchery crew has
been just trying to get all of the pools cleaned out, trying to get all of the fish who swam
out of it. Picking up, unfortunately, dead fish that escaped out of our culture pools.
We have a lot of mud, I mean tons and tons of it, that is out there. Thanks to a number
of National Wildlife Refuges, they’ve been bringing their equipment in, their dump trucks,
front loaders, their various equipment to help us get this cleaned up and it’s a monumental
effort to be able to get all this completed. They’ve been here for about three days and
we expect that they’ll be here for close to another week.
A couple of weeks ago, we received a call from a fish hatchery in White River, it’s
in Bethel, Vermont, and they requested help from the Refuge System because they had a
terrible flood that ran through the hatchery, and deposited a lot of dirt and mud and made
a mess.
I was called to come down and help out with this clean up in some way, if I could, and
once I got here I couldn’t believe the devastation that the river had done to the area. As I
was coming into town, I saw houses with their foundations gone, houses that were completely
missing. I saw bridges that didn’t get washed out but were unbelievably covered with debris
where the water was over the road. And here we have a lot of damage. The mud is like four
and five feet deep in places. So that’s what I’m here to do is to help clean that
up and get the hatchery back running as soon as we can.
It’s great that we could help them out because they don’t have heavy equipment like what
we have and experienced operators that can run it.
I’m just amazed that they were able to come in so quickly and help us get this stuff cleaned
up.
The refuges that have sent people are Great Meadows, Forsythe, Missisquoi, Moosehorn,
Long Island, Parker River, and Aroostook.