BARRE, Vt. — The Salvation Army thrift store looked like it needed a little salvation itself.
The inside of the store had been stripped to its linoleum floor. Clerk Amy Preston was out in the back parking lot, spraying the silt-covered pavement with a pressure washer. Looking a bit forlorn, she introduced her district manager, Chris West, with a pun on his name. "I think we all need to go out West right now."
"We had about 10,000 pieces of clothing, furniture, dishes, household stuff," — all things under heavy demand after flood waters had ravaged the neighborhood six days earlier — and all things ruined by filthy floodwaters when the Stevens Branch spilled over its banks, Preston said.
"This one was about chest-high," she said of the flood that struck the night of May 26. The last flood, about three years earlier, "was about to your knees," she said.
Barre, a small city of about 9,000 whose economic stress already showed in the empty storefronts along Main Street, spent the past week mopping up from the latest flood — the worst in decades, many said — to hit its low-lying downtown. Undermined hillsides on the south side of downtown had led officials to condemn two homes, with the residents of two others at least temporarily displaced.
"We're going to get through it because that's what you do... We have no other choice," said Mayor Thomas Lauzon.
The Salvation Army's local chapter spent the three-day Memorial Day weekend delivering services at the Barre Municipal Auditorium, where the basketball court became a shelter for more than 100 flood victims on cots, despite its own need for salvation. The focus: Others first.
Salvation Army Capt. Travis DeLong had a simple message for those gathered at Thursday's information meeting.
"If you got wet, it doesn't matter what your income status is, we're here to help."
So was the community. On Thursday, the organization held a "Stuff a Truck — Flood of Support" event, promoted by local radio stations, in which a tractor-trailer from a local trucking company was filled with goods donated by residents and businesses.
The Salvation Army crew is hoping to be back in business by Monday, operating out of a tent in the back parking lot, while repairs continue in the store.
At Allen Lumber on North Main Street, company President Gary Allen said staff had been keeping local waste haulers busy carting away ruined materials. Others, less heavily damaged, will be featured in a bargain-basement sale the business is planning for June 18, Allen said.
Out behind one of the main barns where lumber and other products are stored, ground-level train tracks had been turned into a bridge when a swollen stream had eaten the ground out from under them.
"We aren't going to get rail cars in here for months," Allen said. Materials will have to be shipped in by truck, which will be more expensive, he added.
Allen Lumber has been in business 123 years, and Allen, the fourth generation of his family in the business, said the May 26 flood was the most damaging to hit it since an epic flood — widely considered a turning point in Vermont history, struck many parts of the state in 1927.
Allen offered what he called a "pure conjecture" that the 2011 flood might have been worse for his business than the flood of '27, but for the massive flood control dam built father upstream in East Barre during the 1930s.
As bad as Barre was hit, parts of neighboring Berlin, particularly the River Run Trailer Park, may have been hit worse. Most of the more than two dozen mobile homes in the park were destroyed. John and Cheryl Carroll are still living in their trailer, which is on higher ground than their neighbors.
Cheryl Carroll, 47, who's an assistant manager in a supermarket bakery, and John Carroll, 47, a body shop worker, attended the first of two meetings at Barre Municipal Auditorium in which representatives of federal, state and local agencies were made available to flood victims.
"We have no idea what's going on with anything," he said. "We know we can't drink the water," he said, adding, "We have nowhere else to go."
Another resident of the trailer park, Archola Harlow, 66, said her trailer was destroyed. She doesn't want to go back to the park by the river, even if it is rebuilt. "I don't really think I want to," she said. "I'm scared to death."
Barre City Manager Steve Mackenzie said he had been working in recent weeks to close a projected $170,000 budget shortfall, and that expenses from the flood cleanup were unwelcome ones. He said the city's plan for summer street refurbishments would be changed to accommodate new needs — mainly the many spots around town where chunks of roads had been damaged by high water.
But Lauzon was upbeat, promising residents at Thursday's meeting that by the time the city's annual Homecoming Parade rolls around on July 27, repairs would be complete.
"We'll really have something to celebrate."