Rescue workers recovered the body of a 73-year-old man in Lyndonville on Thursday, just hours after his car was washed off a flooded road, Police Chief Jack Harris said. The man’s death is the second known in connection with the storm that pelted Vermont with rain late Wednesday.
Harris identified the victim as John Rice of Concord.
Rice was driving west on Center Street around 11:15 a.m. Thursday into a section of the road flooded by the overflowing Passumpsic River. Onlookers tried to warn him, Harris said, but he waved back and kept driving. When his car caught the river’s current, it was quickly swept 250 to 300 feet into a hay field covered by more than 15 feet of water.
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State and local rescue crews tried for two hours to find the car, a Chevy Impala, but eventually paused the search until the water receded, Harris said. Crews resumed work around 5 p.m. and recovered Rice’s body around 5:30 p.m.
Lyndonville was among the worst-hit areas in the state. According to the National Weather Service, remnants of Tropical Storm Beryl dumped more than 4 inches of rain on the village. That prompted more than two dozen rescues in the area, Harris said.
Early Thursday, authorities confirmed that another man died in Peacham late Wednesday night after the UTV he was driving was swept into another flooded body of water.
