1 of 4
Photos by Lou Varricchio
VAST 1 - Bridge
Mike Paquette of Foote of the Mountain Snow Travelers headed up a team of workers that reseated and repaired the undermined VAST Moses Cameron Bridge across the Middlebury River along Three Mile Bridge Road last weekend.
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Photos by Lou Varricchio
VAST 2 - Bridge
Mike Paquette of Foote of the Mountain Snow Travelers headed up a team of workers that reseated and repaired the undermined VAST Moses Cameron Bridge across the Middlebury River along Three Mile Bridge Road last weekend.
3 of 4
Photos by Lou Varricchio
VAST 3 - Bridge
Mike Paquette of Foote of the Mountain Snow Travelers headed up a team of workers that reseated and repaired the undermined VAST Moses Cameron Bridge across the Middlebury River along Three Mile Bridge Road last weekend.
4 of 4
Photos by Lou Varricchio
VAST 4 - Bridge
Mike Paquette of Foote of the Mountain Snow Travelers headed up a team of workers that reseated and repaired the undermined VAST Moses Cameron Bridge across the Middlebury River along Three Mile Bridge Road last weekend.
MIDDLEBURY | Last week’s Halloween minicyclone did more property damage than first anticipated. Green Mountain Power officials were still accessing the damage from the surprise Oct. 31 rain and wind event when the Eagle went to press.
Several roads were flooded and a few undermined bridges presented concerns.
In Addison County, an example such as the washed-out culvert on Quaker Road in New Haven came after town officials dickered over fixing it. Now the work has to be done and probably at greater expense than originally budgeted.
In Middlebury, the listing Moses Cameron Bridge, snowmobile span, erected in 1999 over the Middlebury River along Three Mile Bridge Road, was fixed just in time.
High water and floods leading up to the Halloween weather event put the bridge in danger of plunging into the river below. Thankfully, members of VAST, the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers, got to work last week to rebuild the popular recreational span connecting Nop Brothers farmland between the waterway.
Mike Paquette of Foote of the Mountain Snow Travelers, was foreman of a team of VAST members and others who secured the needed gear, which included a heavy lift crane, to get the job done.
“I helped build this bridge in 1999, along with Chuck Norton who’s here today, too,” Paquette said. “Now we’re going to shore it up after all the erosion damage.”
Getting the needed permits and an engineer to approve the plans, the all-male work crew lifted the bridge with the aid of the rented crane; they welded new, stronger cantilevered steel i-beam supports.
Paquette said other VAST bridges, especially those in the Northeast Kingdom, need emergency work,too, before the winter recreational season begins.
But as far as the Moses Cameron Bridge goes, work was done just in time for a weather forecast that only a VAST member could love: 70 percent chance of a “plowable snowfall” on the way for Addison County this week. ■
