Waterbury, Vt., residents try to recover from flood

WATERBURY, Vt. -- When Tropical Storm Irene dumped 15 inches of rain on New England, residents of this village in northern Vermont expected the nearby Winooski River to overflow its banks. Few were prepared, though, for the flood's ferocity.

On the afternoon of Aug. 28, the water rose so quickly that hundreds of residents were forced to abandon their homes and move to higher ground. When they returned, they found that the water had filled their basements and submerged their first floors. The floodwaters had overturned barrels of heating oil stored in the basements of homes and office buildings, turning neighborhoods into hazmat zones and permeating the air with oily fumes.

Some 200 homes in Waterbury were severely damaged or destroyed, representing nearly a third of all the Vermont homes damaged by Irene-related flooding.

Today, the toxic smell is gone and most of the Dumpsters that lined the streets in the days after the flood have been replaced by contractors' trucks. Displaced homeowners are eager to rebuild, but the town's recovery faces significant challenges. Private insurance policies don't cover flood damage, and because floods here are rare — the last major flood was in 1927 — few homeowners and businesses had federal flood insurance. Only 71 policies were in effect in the village at the end of August, according to federal data. For all of Vermont, 3,665 flood insurance policies were in force when Irene hit.

Steve and Amy Odefey are among the fortunate. Even though the family has never had so much as a wet basement in their 100-year-old house on Randall Street, they had flood insurance. "I'll be a lot happier writing the premium check now," Steve Odefey says.

Still, the Odefeys' insurance won't cover the loss of their personal property, nor will it cover the entire cost of repairs. For example, insurance will pay only to replace the portion of their first-floor walls that got wet, even though, as a practical matter, they'll need to replace the walls all the way to the ceiling, Odefey says. No contractor wants to match new drywall on the bottom half with the undamaged plaster-over-lath portion of the walls, he says.

After the waters ebbed, damaged roads and bridges were rebuilt fairly quickly. Rebuilding homes is taking much longer because homeowners must navigate a complex maze of state, federal and personal resources, says Chris Nordle, an attorney and member of ReBuild Waterbury, a non-profit formed to organize volunteers and raise funds for recovery efforts.

"When you're talking about 200 homeowners in a village of a couple thousand, you've got 200 little mini disaster-management programs going on," he says. "That's one of the things I have a hard time getting my head around."

Communal living

In addition to raising funds, ReBuild Waterbury is trying to find housing for residents left homeless by the flood. It's a tall order.

Some displaced residents are living in campers in their driveways, hoping that they can move back into their homes before it gets much colder. Others are staying with family and friends whose homes were unaffected by the flood. Nordle and his wife, Michelle Abajian, hosted a family of four and their two dogs for a month after the flood. M.K. Monley, an elementary school art teacher and member of ReBuild Waterbury, is providing temporary housing for a couple and their 1-year-old child. The Odefeys are staying with Reed and Maureen McCracken, owners of CC Outdoor Store. They hope to be back in their home by Christmas.

Low-cost housing was scarce even before the flood; now it's practically non-existent. More than 40 mobile homes in Whalley Park in Waterbury were destroyed, according to the Waterbury Record. At Patterson Park in nearby Duxbury, all 19 mobile homes were flooded. Residents can't return to the parks until the owners repair damaged land and septic systems, and it's unclear whether that will happen. Residents who move or dispose of their trailers are ineligible for assistance from FEMA.

Businesses battle back

Jeffrey Larkin, co-owner of Arvad's Grill and Pub on South Main Street in Waterbury, hasn't had a drop of water in his building in the 22 years he's been in business. Not surprisingly, he doesn't have flood insurance. "Our building was not in the flood plain, so we were never required to have it," he says. "It's expensive and doesn't cover things like inventory."

Unlike homeowners, who can apply for up to $30,200 in federal disaster assistance, businesses aren't eligible for FEMA grants. The best they can hope for in terms of government assistance is a low-interest loan. Arvad's, which is open for business, borrowed $100,000 from the Vermont Economic Development Authority to repair flood damage and replace lost inventory, Larkin says.

John and Jen Kimmich, co-owners of the Alchemist Pub and Brewery on South Main Street, had flood insurance, but the policy didn't cover damage to the building's basement, "which is the lifeblood of our business," John Kimmich says.

Luckily, the Kimmiches have income from a new, small-production brewery that's a mile north of Waterbury. The brewery was scheduled to open Sept. 2, and "the timing couldn't have been more perfect," Kimmich says. "It kept us from going out and filling out job applications." They hope to reopen the Alchemist by winter 2012.

Some areas, such as the Killington ski resort area, didn't participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, says Jill Maynard-Nolan, an insurance agent based in Rutland. Even if business owners and homeowners there had wanted to buy flood insurance before Irene, she says, it would have been prohibitively expensive. The Killington Resort suffered significant damage from the flood but was open in time for the first snow of the season in late October.

Two years ago, Chris McInerney and Steve Pardoe invested more than $300,000 to add a restaurant to the Flat Street Brew Pub in downtown Brattleboro. That investment "pretty much washed down the river" after Irene, McInerney says.

McInerney hopes to have the bar open by Thanksgiving but doesn't know when, if ever, they'll be able to reopen the restaurant. "We had a ton of insurance. We just didn't have flood insurance," he says. "Our policy is 114 pages long, with a one-half-page flood exclusion. The flood exclusion voids everything else."

The flood created other perils for business owners that no amount of insurance will address.

One of Waterbury's largest employers was the state government, which employed nearly 1,600 workers at an office complex in the center of town. After the flood inundated the buildings' basements and ground floors, employees were reassigned to other state offices. Now the state is considering permanently closing the complex and selling the property, which is worrisome to local businesses such as Arvad's.

"We're missing 1,600 employees that normally work and shop and eat and do all their business here," Larkin says. "It will be a long time before it (Waterbury) is revitalized if those people don't come back."

Sweat equity

Two days after the flood, representatives from Hope Force International, a disaster relief organization that has assisted flood victims in New Orleans and Nashville, showed up in Waterbury. Representatives from the organization visited every home that was affected by the flood and reported their findings to town leaders. Their conclusion: Nearly 80% of homeowners affected by the flood couldn't afford to pay contractors to repair all of the damage to their homes. Without volunteer labor to put up drywall, replace roofs and perform other tasks, the group was told, many Waterbury residents would never fully recover.

Reed McCracken, whose home and business were spared by the flood, says the group's message inspired him to volunteer for the rebuilding effort.

"Many of our closest friends in town were flooded," he says. "How do we go back to life as usual when everybody we hang out with is suffering and trying to rebuild their lives? It puts all of our problems in a totally different perspective."