Just watched this raw video of the ice taking out the Dickie bridge up north here in Maine. Quality of the vid isn't very good but you sure get an idea of it all. Ice forces up into house sized chunks... eventually takes out the entire bridge at around the 11:50 mark. I remember the folks on the other side were cut off for a very long time... only bridge along that part of the river. Mother Nature, with a swipe of her hand... unreal.
Here's an article about it... RESIDENTS STRANDED AFTER RIVER FLOODS TAKE OUT HOMES AND BRIDGES DAVID SHARP, Associated Press Apr. 10, 1991 10:18 PM ET ALLAGASH, MAINE ALLAGASH, Maine (AP) _ A towering ice jam along the rain-swollen St. John River destroyed two bridges and backed up water that flooded more than a dozen homes and stranded about 20 residents, authorities said Wednesday. The St. John River bridge at Dickey ''rolled right back just like opening a can of sardines,'' said Lonna McBreairty, whose home sits next to the bridge. ''It snapped and cracked and made a lot of noise. It just kept rolling back until everything fell in. All the trees in front of my house are completely gone,'' said McBreairty, 45. Gov. John R. McKernan declared a state of emergency that authorized use of National Guard troops and other state resources to help flood victims and clean up damage in the northern tip of Maine. The ice jam swept away the St. John River bridge at Dickey, a village within the town of Allagash, and the smaller Little Black River Bridge about a half mile away. Officials estimated it would cost about $10 million to replace the two spans if nothing can be salvaged. No injuries or deaths were reported in the flooding that began Tuesday night and forced the evacuation of up to 100 people, including sightseers who were drawn to Allagash by reports of ice piling up behind the bridges. Residents watched in awe as the ice, towering more than 20 feet above the roadway on the St. John River bridge, broke the 720-foot-long steel span shortly after dark. Margaret Pheriault, 40, watched from her home as the bridge was ripped away. ''One second you saw it and the next second it was completely disappeared. There was just a tremendous roar. A tremendous, tremendous roar. There was just three snaps and the bridge was completely gone,'' she said from the Allagash Consolidated School, where she was taken after being evacuated by canoe from her home Wednesday morning. Pheriault's home was on high ground and surrounded by ice and water. She said more than 30 residents whose homes were flooded came to her house to wait until rescuers arrived in canoes. ''There were homes completely destroyed. There was one lady across the river who stayed on the roof of her house screeching for help, but nobody could get to her,'' Pheriault said. One mobile home was crushed by the ice floe, five homes were knocked off their foundations and at least another 15 homes were flooded, authorities said. Ice boulders littered one section of Route 161 on Wednesday in an area where the river had spilled over its banks and then receded. Maine's flooding followed three warm days of intermittent rain that combined with melting snow. The freeing of the ice jam when the bridge failed let loose a wall of water that inundated dwellings, forcing several families to take shelter on roofs. By midday Wednesday, the water had begun to subside. The destruction of the bridge across the St. John cut off about 20 people living on the north bank. Game wardens in four-wheel-drive vehicles headed to them on logging roads on an evacuation route through Canada, said Tom Beardsley, spokesman for the Aroostook County Emergency Management Agency. The nearest bridge is at Fort Kent, more than 25 miles to the east. John Stanley, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the St. John bridge was used primarily by residents on the north side of the river and by woods workers and others seeking access to forests near the northern tip of Maine.
Amazing forces in play there. We had a local bridge that had the roadway flooded over in a flood I believe in 1936. The bridge was 15' over the river and maybe a 20 foot deep channel. When the flood waters receeded, the roadway of the bridge was covered in river rocks. They had to have been lifted almost 40' off the river bottom. I need to find the picture of it.
Holy smoly. I've heard you shouldn't burn your bridges. But you guys and gals in Maine have "issues".
