After the floodwaters receded, the extent of the damage to the Wilmington business community became apparent. File photo by Mike Eldred/Deerfield Valley News This story by John Hurdle was first published in The Deerfield Valley News on Aug. 20, 2026. WILMINGTON — Lisa Sullivan recalled the morning of Sunday, Aug. 28, 2011, when raging floodwaters from Tropical Storm Irene threatened to destroy the building that houses Bartleby’s Books. Water pressure on the building was so great from the “river” flowing down Route 9 that Sullivan’s husband, a builder, decided to open the front door to help the water drain away, albeit through their bookshop. As soon as they did, a large blue flower tub washed in. Then the smell of propane coming from tanks dislodged from buildings drove them out, for fear of an explosion. The bookstore owner and her husband escaped by climbing to the second floor, then down the back stairs and up the hill behind the shop in Wilmington village. Just before the 15th anniversary of the worst flood in Wilmington in decades, residents remembered the destructive power of the storm as it drove the North Branch of the Deerfield River well over its banks, and into homes and businesses that were closed for months as the owners cleaned out feet of stinking mud and tried to rebuild their lives. “We were in the store about up to our knees in water,” said Sullivan. “At that point, the smell of propane became really intense because large propane tanks were being pulled off buildings. That’s when we said we have to get out because we said we didn’t know what could happen.” Sullivan lost about 85% of her books in the flood, which rose to about 3.5 feet in her store. Her overall losses totaled about $400,000, only $160,000 of which was covered by insurance, she said. At the Village Pub on South Main Street, owner Ginny Blake said she first looked through the windows of her bar and thought the water damage wasn’t too bad. But then she got inside and found her second-floor bar 2 inches deep in “stinky mud.” Still, the damage was indeed minor compared with a downstairs jazz club that had been so badly flooded that freezers and bars had been knocked off their stands and were floating in the muddy water, she said. “The whole downstairs was destroyed and had to be gutted out,” said Blake, whose bar is along the east side of the river, just downstream from the bridge at the intersection of routes 9 and 100. Blake also recalled watching the severe damage done to Dot’s diner on the west bank of the river. Despite the shocking scale of Irene’s destruction, residents and business people also recall the resilience of people who live and do business in Wilmington, and their success in rebuilding from a ferocious act of nature. “What we remember just as much as the destruction is how quickly everyone came together,” said Christian Engel and Jen Betit-Engel, owners of Ratu’s liquor and cannabis stores, in remarks gathered by local writer Rachel Olstein, who has collected a number of Irene stories. “It wasn’t just about rebuilding homes and businesses. People needed driveways repaired so they could get to work, help making a car payment or money for whatever was going to keep their heads above water.” “Irene showed us how vulnerable a small town can be but it also showed us just how strong Wilmington is when people take care of each other,” the Engels wrote. Even businesses that weren’t operating when Irene hit recognize that the storm has had a lasting effect on Wilmington. “Irene is always in the backdrop as we continue to exist,” said Susan Motyl, owner of the five-year-old Alpenglow Bistro, in remarks to Olstein. “There is the reminder of the toll it took and the floods that devastated this area by looking at the height of the flood water clearly delineated on the siding of our town hall offices.” The flood height of Irene is vividly marked on the outside wall of Wilmington Town Hall, exceeding by a few inches the previous record dating to 1938. “Thankfully, this little town manages to skirt severe weather patterns, and perhaps it’s because it withstood and recovered from one not too long ago,” Motyl said. At the Village Pub, customer Eileen Lombardo said she first underestimated Irene, assuming the storm would cause just another nuisance flood on the low-lying sports field near the bar. “We never thought anything of it — it was just another rainstorm,” she said. But it quickly became clear that Irene was no ordinary rainstorm, as shown by Lombardo’s mandatory evacuation from the top floor of the Village Pub building, where she has lived for some 20 years. And after first heading toward Bennington on Route 9, she and a friend turned around because the quantity of water cascading down from the hills during the storm showed that continuing to head west was, to put it mildly, unsafe. “We’re headed up the mountain and we saw all this water rushing down. We said, ‘Let’s go home.’ It’s a good thing we did,” she said. For Sullivan, who also owns the Pickwell’s Barn women’s boutique in Wilmington village, reopening the bookstore about three months after losing most of her stock was an important way of showing the town that the business was invested in the community. But the rebuilt inventory — some of which is now on the second floor — has been accompanied by contingency planning for any new monster storm. There are now empty boxes on the third floor that would hopefully enable Sullivan to move her inventory out of harm’s way on the first floor if a storm of Irene’s magnitude ever comes again. “We’re more prepared in that we know it can happen,” she said. Read the story on VTDigger here: 15 years after Irene, plucky business owners recall the monster storm and its aftermath. ...read more read less