The Mother of Floods

4/29/2022 (Permalink)

As we look ahead to May and Mother’s Day, your neighborhood SERVPRO team thinks it’s important to mark the Mother’s Day floods of 2006, which caused unprecedented damage to New Hampshire’s landscape and its communities.

Sure, they weren’t that long ago, but most people have probably already forgotten that 2006 brought historic flooding to NH, which led to an official disaster declaration by former president of the United States, George W. Bush. 

While no one, fortunately, perished in these floods, water damage across the state of New Hampshire exceeded $14 million, with an estimated 600 roads closed and approximately 60 washed away. 

With these statistics, it’s easy to assume that people just didn’t do enough at the time to mitigate the disaster. 

However, Goffstown fire Lieutenant Bill Connor recalls, “It started as a typically rainy weekend. We started getting calls that were giving us a hint that something bigger was happening.”

As we now know, something bigger did happen, of course; however, for the Goffstown Fire Department, the floods came with a small, but significant silver lining: “We now have boats with engines that are made to operate in different conditions than the ones we used to have. We’ve changed our suits that we use for rescue,” according to Connor.  

Sometimes it takes a mother of a flood to shine the light on the need for stronger emergency forces, in the event that our state should ever experience another flood of this magnitude again. 

Should you find yourself dealing with water damage on your property, your local SERVPRO of Haverhill / Newburyport team will show up to save the day, delivering water restoration and water remediation services you can trust.