Joseph Belus, a 90-year-old Shelton resident, stuck out the worst of Hurricane Irene in his Isinglass Road home alone, without power or telephone service.
He lost power Saturday night, and found it still off Sunday morning, when he awoke in his home.
“When I woke up it was dark. The lights were out,” Belus said.
That’s when Belus decided he needed to get some help.
He got it, and by Sunday afternoon, Belus was one of a handful of people who had taken advantage of an emergency shelter set up at Shelton High School for the storm.
Without phone service, Belus first tried to attract attention from his neighbors by banging on a pot to make noise.
“I got out one of the big pots and started banging it,” Belus recalled Sunday, safely inside the shelter, with a ham sandwich and hot cup of coffee in front of him.
When no one heard the racket, Bellis said he “took a chance driving the car.”
He got to the end of his driveway, on the main road, and flashed his car’s headlights to signal for help.
Someone saw him and called the fire department. By 2 p.m., a fire fighter picked Belus up and drove him to the shelter.
Emergency Management Director John Millo said about a half dozen people came through the shelter on Saturday and Sunday. Most were there temporarily while they sought out other places to stay.
Flood Concerns
Some of the people were from the Maples, a neighborhood along the banks of the Housatonic River that was issued a mandatory evacuation.
Millo said that evacuation remained in effect Sunday night because of high levels in the Housatonic River.
As of 5 p.m. Sunday, the river was at a flow level of 54,360 cubic feet per second, Millo said. That’s about the same as during a storm in March that caused serious flooding in the neighborhood.
The worst flooding there happened in 1955, when the flow rate was at 60,000 cubic feet per second, Millo said. He expects the river might reach those levels again before subsiding.
“It’s a good possibility at the rate we’re going, we could exceed and break the Flood of 1955 record,” Millo said. “It’s just going to be a mess. And I don’t know when it’s going to recede. It could be a couple days.”
The Emergency Management Office is monitoring the water levels every half hour, he said.
Article continues after video of water rushing over the Derby dam on the Housatonic River.
The Storm Damage
Shelton saw a lot of trees toppled, and wires down due to the winds, according to Assistant Fire Chief Paul Wilson.
Millo said more than 100 large trees fell into roadways or public land. He didn’t have a count on the number of trees that affected private property.
Article continues after video.
Millo said the most damage from the storm seemed to be of electrical wires downed.
By 2:30 p.m., about 7,000 homes, or 42 percent of the town, were still without power, according to United Illuminating. Millo estimated that might be the peak number of reported outages from the day.
Millo said the United Illuminating Company was working to restore power to homes. It was unclear when all power would be restored.
Public works crews were busy clearing roadways of debris, he said.
“What we have to concentrate on now is our clean up efforts,” Millo said.
Wilson said the hardest hit part of town appeared to be in Huntington. Readers on the Valley Indy Facebook page also reported a lot of debris in roadways in White Hills.
Wilson said the fire department was fully staffed starting at 10 p.m. Saturday. They started receiving lots of calls for commercial fire alarms and trees down at about 5 a.m. Sunday, he said.
“From there, the winds started picking up. Heavy rain, with the ground being very soft as it is, and with the winds, a lot of trees have been coming down,” Wilson said. “We’ve gone to quite a few different alarms with trees on homes and trees on wires.”
One of those calls was for a home on Keron Drive, off Long Hill Avenue.
A large tree behind the home snapped near the base, and landed on top of a ranch home. No one was injured, but the family was removed and brought to the shelter, Wilson said.
By 2 p.m. the homeowners had left, and found shelter with family members, officials said.
The shelter was closed at 4 p.m., Millo said. All people who arrived there were found other places to stay, he said.
Assistant Ambulance Chief Joe Laucella said Echo Hose Ambulance had a full crew working to respond to issues, but that there were no storm-related injuries in town.
“We escaped a big storm,” Laucella said.
