FARMINGTON – Ice jams sent the Sandy River over its banks in several places Wednesday night and Thursday in Farmington and Phillips shutting down roads and closing businesses.
A truck driver got into cold water after he went around a police barricade trying to deliver milk to Cumberland Farms on the intervale on Route 4 in Farmington. David McCarty of Hermon, 35, had to be rescued by firefighters in a bucket loader after the water came up to the hood of the truck at about 3:30 a.m. Thursday and stranded him in it in front of Gifford’s ice cream store.
Two firefighters donned cold water suits and were attached to ropes in the bucket loader as they went out to get him out of the truck, Farmington Deputy Fire Chief Tim Hardy said Thursday.
Farmington officer Darin Gilbert charged McCarty, who was driving a Garelick Farms truck full of milk, with failure to obey a police officer’s directions, dispatcher Bonnie Pomerleau said Thursday.
The truck was frozen in the ice and was still there Thursday afternoon as the river receded.
In Farmington, the river crossed Route 4, also known as Main Street, and flooded Hippach Field, Front and Prescott streets and the University of Maine at Farmington’s fields and parking lot off Front Street, Franklin County emergency management director Tim Hardy said.
Farmington police directed traffic all day into the evening as it was detoured up Route 2 to Maple Street in Farmington causing slow commuting.
Hardy also went up to Phillips to tour “quite a significant ice jam” on Reeds Mills Road off Route 142, he said.
It flooded the road and large chunks of ice were in the road blocking it, Hardy said.
Phillips Road Commissioner Steve Haines was going to try to move some of the ice from the road, he said, to open it.
Hardy stayed up all night Wednesday and was still going Thursday to keep an eye on the jams and flooded areas.
The jam on the river in the center of Farmington had grown smaller in length but thicker, Hardy said, as the ice stacked up. It was more than a mile long Tuesday but about a mile long Thursday, he said.
A smaller ice jam in Farmington Falls had broken up Thursday, he said.
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