The Port City lucked out during the recent four-day rainstorms that dropped record rainfall—up to 10 inches—on Seacoast communities. “We didn’t have any substantial damage to any public properties—roads, bridges, municipal buildings,” says City Manager John Bohenko. The city closed a few roads to traffic during the rain, but quickly reopened them as the water levels diminished. The worst damage seems to have come from flooded basements, a problem common to every town on the Seacoast. Portsmouth has opened the recycling center for extended hours so that residents can discard damaged belongings.

Other communites were not so lucky. Due to the Cocheco River and the Salmon Falls River, which rose over 13 feet above its normal four-foot level between May 13 and May 15, Dover fared far less well. Deputy Fire Chief Richard Driscoll says there is “damage from one end of town to the other because of the way the river runs through the city.”

According to Driscoll, residents in the Old Madbury Lane and Sawyer Mills apartments, the Snow’s Court Prospect Street area, and some areas of Dover Point road were particularly devastated. The city’s Human Services office is attempting to find temporary housing for residents whose homes are uninhabitable, but the storm came at an unfortunate time: since the University of New Hampshire graduation ceremony occurred over the weekend, most of the rooms had been booked in advance and were not available for the newly homeless. Driscoll says that people are beginning to find places with friends and relatives, and the city is working to find property owners willing to accept short-term leases.

As devastating as the floods were for residential areas, some businesses hardly fared better, particularly those near the Central Avenue Bridge. At one point, there was a great deal of concern that Earcraft Music on Central Ave would be lifted from its foundation by the raging river. The store was not, though Driscoll says their basement was ravaged. “There was four or five feet of water in Earcraft’s basement. It became part of the river—it was flowing in and flowing out.” The damage did not reach the main floor, though, and the music store reopened for business the next day. Kelly’s Row, a Central Avenue restaurant, reported extensive damage to the kitchen, stock room, and lower dining room, and One Second Computers received help from firefighters in moving merchandise from the building.

Damage to Dover’s infrastructure occurred patchily throughout the city, mostly due to water damage to roads. Driscoll estimates road damage to be around $800,000, and says he would not be surprised if the total damages to the city add up to $1 million.

As a precautionary measure, Rochester officials fearing overflow from the Salmon Falls River issued a mandatory evacuation order for over 1,700 dwelling units along the river, which, according to City Engineer Tom Willis, meant clearing out all units within a couple thousand feet of the river. Their concerns proved warranted, as most residential damage occurred in that region. City Manager John Scruton says that most of the damage to businesses and homes was from flooded basements, though a few suffered significant first floor water damage. Though most evacuated residents have returned to their homes, some were still without power as of Friday.

The worst piece of infrastructure damage was the destruction of the bridge that connects Chesley Hill Road to Route 202. Willis says that the city is still deliberatinghow to reconstruct it, “whether we do the quick fix and patch it, or go back and analyze it and rebuild it so it won’t happen again.” The quick fix, Willis says, would probably cost between $250,000 and $300,000, but a full renovation would be closer to a million. That’s in addition to the other $125,000 or so he estimates as the cost of repairing other miscellaneous damage to roads and other city property.

Keith Noyes, Director of Public Works for Exeter, says that though some residents were seen paddling through downtown streets, the damage to the city could have been much worse. “Our main concern throughout this was a repeat of what happened in 1996, which was our water treatment plant getting severely damaged to the point where it was unusable for a two week period.” Luckily, the plant remained functional throughout the ordeal.

The rest of the city, too, seems to have done fairly well. A number of bridges suffered erosion, leaving them temporarily unusable but structurally sound. Noyes estimated damages at around $100,000, though he said that ongoing inspections were likely to turn up further damage.

In a few areas, some Durham residents were isolated by flooding, made worse by what the town Web site describes as “the stench of raw sewage … due to overflowed septic systems and knee high pools of water surrounding houses.” Clearly, that’s not a puddle you’d want to walk through. To minimize the danger of contact with such waste, the Durham Wastewater Treatment Plant elected to dilute untreated or partially treated discharge and wash it out to sea. The city did what they could to assist the stranded, and residents were thankful; one firefighter, having delivered medicine to a Cold Springs Road resident, returned with a batch of home-baked cookies.

Asking readers to be cautious around the still-rough waters, Town Administrator Todd Selig cites a May 16 Fire Department rescue of “two youngsters inner tubing upstream of the Mill Pond heading inexorably toward the falls below.” If you didn’t know it was a college town….

Most of the closed roads were reopened by Saturday, though Wiswall Bridge is closed pending repairs and a thorough examination to determine if it is structurally sound.

Among the towns that fared the worst were Newmarket and York.

Newmarket surely bore the brunt of the storm. Massive flooding literally scoured downtown, closing off access to Durham via Route 108 and Packers Falls Road and adding as much as an hour to many people’s commutes. In total, well over a thousand residents were evacuated from their homes. Photos taken after the storm show cars flipped sideways and yards so eroded that some foundations were almost entirely exposed.

Officials estimate that the cost to repair roads, drainage systems and pump stations will come to between $500,000 and $600,000. That doesn’t count the damage to businesses and residences, some of which remain unusable.

The damage to both businesses and residences in York was also extensive, according to Gretchen Seaver, the city’s Human Resource Director, who was answering phones for workers out on the roads. As of Friday, Seaver said she knew of at least eight families who were still displaced due to water damage to their homes, and said that the majority of the businesses in the city still had not reopened.

Fortunately, volunteers poured through the city to help out; unaffected business owners lent a hand to those who had been hit by the floods, as well as groups from Americorp and the White Pine Community School in Cape Neddick. The floods could not have come at a worse time for local businesses, according to Seaver. “You have to appreciate,” she says, “that they were stocking up for the Memorial Day weekend, and so they had a lot of stock, much of which was damaged. It’s a short season to make any money. Now it’s even shorter.”

For many residents, pumping water out of basements and replacing damaged furniture and other property is just the beginning. Seaver says that some residents reported black mold appearing only a couple of days after the water receded, necessitating even more long-term and costly cleanup operations.