Vermont residents are cleaning up after severe storms this week washed out roads and flooded homes and businesses.
Dustin Smith lives with his wife and 9-month-old baby on Camel’s Hump, a mountain that borders the Winooski River. He said the roads near his home washed out, and flooding closed the bridge – leaving his family and neighbors stuck.
“It’s been sort of sequential with how quickly they’ve been opening up but we were able to cross the bridge, I guess, yesterday, mid-morning,” said Smith.
Smith worried about his neighbors on a road he describes as a “mountain cul-de-sac.”
“We have a couple of elderly neighbors who are in their late 80s and 90s and we were thinking a lot about them. And there’s someone who is pregnant that lives up the road, so we were a little concerned about her – she’s 39 weeks and could come any time. And then another friend of ours who lives a couple more houses down had their baby in Burlington and wasn’t able to get back home, so we’re in a lot of contact with them kind of keeping them updated,” said Smith.
Smith said he and his wife received updates and communicated with neighbors through a group text and a neighborhood forum on mobile app NextDoor. When the first round of storms cleared up earlier this week, they set out on foot.
“We took a walk with the baby once the storm cleared and bumped into a bunch of people and checked in with folks, heard what was going on with their place,” said Smith.
Kelly Pajala, the State Representative for Windham/Bennington/Windsor district, is also the Town Clerk of Londonderry. She and her sons and cats were forced to leave their apartment and the building had around two feet of water surrounding it at the peak of the storm. When they returned after the rain stopped, inches of water covered the floor.
“We aren’t able to live there right now. We had to move everything out, which we did with a lot of volunteer help on Tuesday and the landlord immediately started working on the building to get everything that was wet removed and to start drying it out,” said Pajala.
Pajala, who is balancing her own displacement while trying to help constituents in a similar situation, welcomed Governor Phil Scott’s request for a major disaster declaration. The White House granted the request Friday morning soon after Pajala spoke with WAMC.
“Oh, I really wish that had all been approved yesterday and we were moving forward with that. Businesses are just waiting for that FEMA representative to show up and get started,” said Pajala.
Pajala said her neighbors have come together, but was not aware of any action at the state level to find a place to live for those whose homes have been damaged.
“My local community, there’s a lot of help being offered and people with space offering it to people who have been displaced, which is amazing and that is part of community’s response to something like this that just is overwhelmingly generous at times. But I have not heard a state response to how to help people who have lost housing from the flood,” said Pajala.
Grace Oedel, Executive Director of Northeast Organic Farmers Association of Vermont, welcomes the request for federal aid, but added many farmers who have sought dollars from Washington have faced a long wait. She said farmers are still waiting for federal funds after a late spring frost destroyed fruit crops earlier this year.
“We are hopeful that emergency designation will help release more federal funds, but those processes are often very slow, as you know, and likely to be incomplete and…those programs often don’t work well for farmers of our state’s size,” said Oedel. “Our farms are just small and diversified…”
After Hurricane Irene in 2011, Oedel said NOFA-VT established an emergency relief fund. At the time, she said $250,000 was distributed to farmers. She estimates the fund would need at least double that to accommodate requests from this week’s storms. In the last two days, she says contributions have totaled around $125,000.
“We are so grateful to everyone who has already stood together, showed up at a farm to volunteer, given to the emergency fund, shared on social media. It all really, really helps to generate the support that we’ll need, that we’re strong when we’re connected and resilient and showing up for each other. That’s what we’re gonna do this time just like that’s what we did in Irene,” said Oedel.
