Stranded neighbors in Bolton build a bridge

Dec. 2—BOLTON — When Tropical Storm Henri in August wiped out a small bridge on Mark Anthony Lane and cut off access to four houses, residents on that street banded together to restore their lifeline.

Through a combination of luck and perseverance, they secured a new bridge to replace the old deteriorating one that had been swept away by Henri's surging rainfall. The replacement bridge reattached Mark Anthony Lane over the Hop River, granting some homeowners renewed access and peace of mind. But the bridge also connected community members in their restoration efforts, turning relative strangers into neighborhood partners.

"It's a really quiet road and we only have a couple of neighbors, but I would say that before (the storm) we didn't really interact with each other very much," resident Christy Cook said. "But I feel like we had to work with each other and got to know each other a bit better."

Cook said she was taking an online exam for graduate school when rushing water from the storm started to overtake the bridge.

"By the time I finished my exam, which was less than an hour long, it had already eroded the bridge," she said. "It really happened quick."

Her father, Dave Cook, said he has never seen water like that during his 38 years of living on the street, adding it looked like a "river on the road."

The Cooks were among the residents whose home was stranded when the bridge collapsed. For five weeks they used a footbridge to get to back and forth from their houses, hauling groceries and other personal belongings by hand as they crossed the Hop River.

The absence of a bridge that could carry traffic also meant that no emergency vehicles could get close to their homes. Luckily there were no incidents during that five-week period, Interim Town Administrator Jim Rupert said.

But Evelyn O'Connor, 67, says she still remembers waking at night in a panic knowing that emergency vehicles would have trouble getting to her house across the river.

"I'd wake up at night — if something happens, how am I going to get out of here?" O'Connor said.

Because Mark Anthony Lane is a private road, the financial responsibility of replacing the bridge fell upon the street's seven homeowners. Residents hoped they would receive some state or federal funding to help cover the cost of a permanent bridge, which would have ranged from $500,000 to $700,000. But no relief came, they said.

"We exhausted every resource possible," Rupert said. "We talked to the state. We talked to (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). We looked at funding from the Army Core of Engineers — We looked so hard for any amount of money that we could get to help fund this project, but it just wasn't there."

Mark Anthony Lane residents didn't have a road or condominium-type association to handle the problem. They haven't needed one in the past, Dave Cook said, because his landscaping company handled most of the maintenance, and residents chipped in financially.

But this time, they really had to come together to help each other out.

"It really brought us together because everybody took a piece" of the work, O'Connor said. Christy Cook "took on the IT part, contacting people, setting up the Zoom meetings with the town. My husband took the responsibility of collecting money from residents."

Shortly after the storm, Christy Cook uploaded a video on her TikTok account that showed real-time footage of waves of water gushing over the bridge and the road collapsing. The video also included a screen shot from an online news story detailing the incident.

Christy Cook said she created the video in an attempt to raise awareness of the unfortunate situation and acquire funding to help restore the area.

Instead, help came in the form of a kind gesture. Dave Cook and his landscaping partner, Joseph Highland, acquired a bridge free of charge through a connection at Hemlock Construction. Residents paid a total of $70,000 to install it, or a little more than $10,000 each, which Dave called a "drop in the bucket" compared to the town's original estimate.

O'Connor said the new bridge isn't as picturesque as the old one, but it's extremely sturdy. Residents were told that any vehicle that can drive down Interstate 84 could safely pass over the bridge.

And much like their new bridge, these residents are resilient.

"The people on the private road who took care of the bridge did it right," Dave Cook said.

Austin Mirmina is the Journal Inquirer's business reporter and also covers the town of Windsor.