The never-ending project to fill my hole in the ocean while bailing it out

Preparing for Sailing Season '04
The April Fool's Day Flood ... the aftermath

Peabody firefighters help a stranded motorist 
Boston Herald Photo

Peabody postal worker pulls mail from flooded mailbox
Boston Globe Photo

Rescue workers paddle through downtown Peabody
Salem News Photo

Same location (photo on left), next morning
Salem News Photo

The boat rescues and spontaneous rivers may have been confined mostly to Peabody. But Thursday's ceaseless rain drubbed the rest of the North Shore, too, and yesterday the area struggled to recover.

Hundreds pumped out flooded basements. Some Beverly residents couldn't flush their toilets. Salem State College students found their classes cancelled. And Topsfield drivers were treated to mudslides - sans the Kahlua.

One of the hardest-hit areas was Salem's Canal street, which was under more than 3 feet of water yesterday.

"Water is still coming up from out of the street," Steve Rima, owner of the McDonald's on Canal Street, said yesterday morning. "We are literally an island. I'm 3 inches from bankruptcy."

McDonald's was one of several Canal Street businesses, including Bagel World and Dunkin' Donuts, that were still closed yesterday.

Salem State College cancelled classes yesterday because of a flood in its main parking lot. The college plans to fix the drainage problems in the O'Keefe Center lot, which holds 750 cars, but that won't happen until the summer of 2005, according to spokeswoman Karen Cady.

The college will reopen for classes today, she said.

Homeowners were hit hard all over Salem, but the problems were isolated, according to Public Services Director Bruce Thibodeau. Although flooding between Canal Street and Jefferson Avenue was bad, it was better than in past years because of a recent drainage construction project, he said. And city workers headed off problems in some other flood-prone areas by cleaning out catch basins in advance of the storm.

Still, for homeowners watching basement furniture float around, it was a nightmare.

"We've got a list of probably 30 people waiting for basement pump-outs," said Jeff Brown of the Salem Fire Department.

F.W. Webb, a plumbing and heating supply company on Bridge Street, had water in its basement but found a silver lining in the storm. "We're selling a lot of sump pumps," said general manager Robert Matvichuk.

Beverly park submerged

In Beverly, drainage improvements in recent years curtailed or eliminated problems in several flood-prone areas.

"Things did work incredibly well," said Michael Collins, Beverly's public services director. 

But not all of Beverly went unscathed. Collins said close to 70 people had called his office by 1 a.m. Friday looking for help bailing out their basements. And numerous lawns and streets were still covered in pools of water yesterday.

The Hannah Elementary School didn't open Friday due to flooding from nearby Kelleher Pond.

Beverly Farms was also hit hard. Beach Street near West Beach was impassable, and Dix Park was submerged, with the play equipment poking from the water resembling something out of the movie "Waterworld."

Susan O'Brien, who lives on Goodwin Road, trudged around her yard in rubber boots yesterday, her lawn strewn with pumps straining to remove water from her basement.

"It's pretty scary," she said, noting that flooding can be serious trouble for some of the neighborhood's elderly residents.

Thomas Henry, another Goodwin Road resident, had 6 feet of water in his basement.

Beverly also experienced problems with its sewer system yesterday due to the high volume of water from the rain, and the amount of water pumped from basements into the sewers. That meant in some low-lying areas, residents couldn't flush their toilets.

Route 1 mudslides

In Topsfield, police and public works crews spent Thursday night fighting a series of rain-driven mudslides along Route 1. Hills near the highway eroded in the storm. Mud blocked the road, barely allowing a single lane of traffic to get past, Topsfield Police Sgt. James Harris said.

Eventually, the town brought in a massive front-end loader to hoist the mud off Route 1. 

"I was amazed someone didn't get hurt," Harris said.

The Swampscott Fire Department, meanwhile, had responded to 75 calls for flood-related incidents, as of yesterday, Fire Department Capt. Kevin Thompson said. Most people needed help turning off gas and electric utilities in their flooded basements.

But the storm left a frustrating mess behind. The town had just finished a systematic street-cleaning ahead of lifting all parking bans before the storm waters swept sand, rocks and debris back onto the roadways.

In Danvers, the Mill Pond spilled onto Sylvan Street, a culvert collapsed near the high school and a faithful in-ground pool died at the age of 31.

The pool had served Warren D'Eon of Highland Terrace since 1972, but decades of weathering put deep cracks in its concrete apron. Thursday's heavy rain reduced it to rubble.

Staff reporters Thomas Lake, Tom Dalton, Marc Fortier, Michael Puffer and Jill Harmacinski contributed to this story.

PEABODY -- The heavy rains may have stopped yesterday, but residents and business owners here and in other northern Massachusetts communities were dealing with the soggy aftermath, flooding conditions that could linger through the weekend.

The slow-moving storm that battered southern New England started late Wednesday and dumped as much as 8 inches of rain on some areas. Officials at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency continued to monitor communities statewide for flooding yesterday, with a focus on the Merrimack River Valley.

Many Peabody residents donned galoshes and took out their water pumps yesterday.

Some, like Barbara Nelson, were out taking pictures of downtown, which looked a little like a fishbowl dotted with floating cars.

"People don't realize the power of this water," she said. "This happens every time we have heavy rains. I can understand a little water, but look at this."

Floods are not uncommon in downtown Peabody. Mayor Michael J. Bonfanti -- who declared a state of emergency in the city Thursday night and closed the downtown area, known as Peabody Square -- said floods occur nearly every year, with the worst in 1902, 1954, and 1996. The heavy rain, an overflow from three brooks in separate parts of the city, pushed the water toward the square, which sits below sea level. Inadequate underground water pipes also contributed to the flood, which clogged traffic and shut down businesses throughout the day, officials said.

"The problem is that this is a low area," Bonfanti said. "It's a wet area, brooks drain into it, and when the tidal surge comes in there [is] nowhere for the water to drain."

Richard Carnevale, director of public services, said there was very little property damage and very little economic damage with this flood. He estimated the cost of repairs at about $500,000, but said it would take at least a few days before the water would be completely cleared.

Michael Wellikoff, a lawyer at Dolan & Regan on Chestnut Street, had to make an illegal U-turn and go down a one-way street the wrong way to get to work by 8 a.m. yesterday.

"It was the absolutely only way to get here," he said. "From [Route] 128, it would have taken me like a minute, but it took me 20 minutes."

Peabody wasn't the only area affected by the two days of soaking rains.

In Hudson, firefighters stacked 200 bales of hay in back of four houses on Laurel Drive to prevent a mud slide on Thursday night.

"Some soil loosened up, and we responded on a request from the landowner," said Fire Chief Fred Dusseault. The hay "prevents more mud from getting in there," he said.

Fire crews in Concord contacted MEMA yesterday morning when the Powder Mill Dam on the Assabet River in Acton threatened to overflow into Concord, said fire Captain Mark Cotreau.

"We were notified by the Acton Police Department that there had been a partial failure of the Acton dam, and Concord was directly downstream," he said. "Apparently when the dam operators were attempting to regulate the flow because of the water problem, they lost part of the dam and declared an emergency condition."

Cotreau said that the situation was quickly stabilized and that crews will wait until the water level returns to normal before they attempt to fix the problem.

Peter Judge, a spokesman for MEMA, said the emergency operations center in Framingham opened at 8 a.m. yesterday. MEMA officials help coordinate the National Guard, State Police, Red Cross, and other agencies to assist communities affected by weather-related emergencies.

Despite the downpours in some areas, Judge said the requests for help "have been somewhat limited."

"Our greatest concern is the northeast part of the state," he said. "The Merrimack and its valleys are the only rivers that haven't crested. That's the place we're most concerned with."

Phil Stocking, director of emergency services for the Red Cross, said crews have been going door to door in nine communities -- including Winchester, Dorchester, Quincy, and Waltham -- offering assistance to homeowners with water problems.

"A lot of what we've been seeing is basement flooding," he said. "Most of the folks have power, and they have electricity. They just have a lot of water in the basement. We've run across some homes that the sewage has backed up into the home."

Steven Rosenberg of the Globe staff contributed to this report.