Vermont Flood Victims Fear Being Left Behind

It's been more than two months since Anne Ward and her children were flooded out of their home in Berlin, Vermont. If the government shuts down, it could be months before they can rebuild.

While many Americans have spent the last few weeks getting excited about back-to-school shopping, apple picking and leaves changing colors, Vermonters have had little time to enjoy the change in season. Instead, most of them are looking ahead to the winter, which they fear will come quickly and before they can get the federal assistance needed to keep their homes heated in cold temperatures and to repair roads before they freeze over.

"We have people in Barre who are living in these houses where mold is crawling up the walls, where they don't have a new boiler. They don't have heat, they don't have hot water and that's something we can kind of ignore right now in the community," Ward told Newsweek. "But the nights are getting chilly and very soon we'll be talking about people dying in these houses, but the disaster was in July."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) told Newsweek it has already approved over $19 million in assistance for individuals and households affected by the Vermont floods and applications are still being approved. While FEMA said it expects to have sufficient funds to cover all those impacted in Vermont, the agency is down to the last $2.4 billion of the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF). Less than a month ago, that balance was $3.4 billion.

If Congress fails to pass spending legislation before federal funding expires at midnight on September 30, the DRF could run into a deficit with two months left of the Atlantic hurricane season and Vermont residents could be cut off from funding.

FEMA already implemented Immediate Needs Funding (INF) guidance on August 29 when the DRF reached a minimum threshold balance, meaning it would prioritize available funding to ongoing disaster operations, while new obligations for non-lifesaving and non-life-sustaining activities would be paused until funds were topped up.

Given the size of Vermont, INF should still allow FEMA to meet the financial needs of those impacted by July's floods even if the government shuts down. However, if there were to be a devastating storm in a larger state like Florida, and Congress fails to authorize any new spending, emergency funds would need to be reevaluated. With hurricane season lasting another nine weeks, the chances of that could be likely.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration already bumped up their prediction for an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season to 60 percent in August, up 30 percent from their outlook in May. The projections estimate there could be two to five major hurricanes this season. In the 30 days following Hurricane Ian, FEMA obligated $2.6 billion in lifesaving and life-sustaining operations—more than what is currently left in the DRF.

In the eight weeks following the floods in Vermont, there have been six billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the United States, according to the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. In August alone, intense firestorms destroyed Maui, burning down the island's historic town of Lahaina, baseball-sized hail was reported in Minnesota, and Hurricane Idalia made landfall as a Category 3 storm in Florida's Big Bend region.

"Climate change came for Vermont and for Hawaii in a big way, and we're on opposite ends of the country," Representative Becca Balint, Vermont's sole congresswoman, told Newsweek. "It's going to be coming for every single congressional district."

She criticized her Republican counterparts for launching an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden while holding up a necessary spending bill while thousands of Americans awaited disaster relief.

"They need us to do the work of keeping the government open and getting these funds out to people," the Democrat said. "This is, in some instances, truly a matter of life and death when people don't know what they're going to do when the snow and the ice comes."

Ward suggested that feeling of helplessness may already be dawning on many Vermonters.

"I wanted so badly to believe that we were going to be OK and as we get further and further away, I still don't have the information I need for my insurance, and I'm starting to get big rejections from FEMA," Ward said. "It's not true that we're going to be okay."

Had Ward waited until the evacuation order to leave her home on July 10, she and her two children would not have made it out alive. Ward had been paying close attention to the weather ever since she saw the word "catastrophic"—a descriptor she hadn't seen on previous alerts—pop up in the storm warnings.

Leaving their house behind, the family drove to Mosaic Vermont, the sexual violence prevention and response agency where Ward serves as executive director, in Barre. After evacuating the people who were living at Mosaic's shelter program, the flood waters trapped Ward and her daughters in Barre, forcing them to wait until it subsided.

The floodwater filled the basement of the building, damaging the nonprofit's washer, dryer, furnace, water heater and supplies for sexual assault survivors. Ward's home in Berlin was also flooded, and the oil tank in the house dumped around 200 gallons of oil in the crawlspace, making it an indefinite hazmat zone.

To qualify for relief funds, representatives from FEMA, the National Flood Insurance Program, and the Small Business Administration all had to individually go take pictures, write up a list of losses and establish proof of loss. Ward expressed her frustrations with having to submit three different claims for the same loss. She was also upset that federal agents, who had to travel to Vermont to evaluate homes and businesses, were taking away local hotel rooms from residents like her, who were displaced by the floods.

"They're all coming out to do the exact same thing, and they're not talking to each other," she said. "It's just such a waste of resources, and in the end, I'm not sure I'm that much better off."

"The paperwork alone, following something like this happening, is so incredibly prohibitive to anybody being able to get their needs met and succeed in accessing the resources we keep hearing are available," Ward added. "Every single day I am processing additional paperwork requests or 'Can you send this one in a little bit differently?' I'm just flabbergasted by how challenging it is for me to navigate all of these systems."

Maryann Cavlier, who was living in a mobile home in Berlin at the time of the flood, never had anyone from a federal agency evaluate her losses. Because the damage to her trailer was so severe, she was directed to do the physical evaluation herself.

"The FEMA inspector had me walk through my place, the mold and the gunk and the goop. I had to walk through with my phone to do a FaceTime, and that was the extent of the re-inspection," Cavlier told Newsweek. "They didn't have actual inspectors coming out [to Vermont], or they were coming out and refusing to go [into the homes]. But it's OK for me to go in and be exposed to the mold and the sewage?"

"When I say I lost everything, I lost everything," the 66-year-old retiree said.

On the night of July 10, she was pulled out of her home through the window by a swift water rescue team. Her home, like many others at the park, ended up being condemned due to the damage from the floods. She is currently waiting on money from the SBA so she can make a down payment on a new mobile home.

"You feel powerless working against the federal government. They work on their own time, and we're running short on time," Cavlier said.

Balint echoed those frustrations, saying that flood victims needed the funding weeks ago. The White House has already asked Congress to approve an additional $4 billion in emergency disaster aid on top of the $12 billion request from last month.

"I know it's hard for people to think about these colder states, but once you get to the end of August, beginning of September, you really turn your attention to winter," the congresswoman said. "[Vermonters] need to make sure their furnaces are ready, that the wood stoves are ready, that the heat pumps are ready and they're still waiting on relief funding to be able to make those changes."

As residents in Vermont brace for the winter, many businesses have already taken a hit, missing out on New England's tourist season.

"Foliage season is when a lot of my small businesses make up the difference, that they go into the black after being in the red all year," Balint said. "I am deeply concerned that they are not going to be able to close that gap before winter here."

Emily Ruff, the executive director of Sage Mountain Botanical Sanctuary in central Vermont, told Newsweek her conservation center hasn't been able to reopen because the road is still being repaired. Even though she's hopeful for programs to return by early October, she realizes that timeline will leave the sanctuary with just a month to make up for a summer's worth of revenue.

"We run programs from June through October because cabins and camping and stuff is not hospitable in the wintertime here and we rely on that income for the majority of our annual budget," Ruff said. "Ultimately, the cancellation of our in-person program was economically a big injury to our annual operating budget this year."

Balint and Vermont's senators, Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders, have pushed for the release of emergency funds for transportation repairs associated with the floods. The Department of Transportation has released at least $10 million.

"Recovery looks different for every community, and we know additional targeted assistance will be needed for many of Vermont's farmers, small businesses and the hardest-hit communities," a spokesperson for Welch told Newsweek.

Road rebuilding and other infrastructure needs would be impacted by FEMA's INF guidance. While these longer-term recovery projects are reimbursed by FEMA rather than paid for by the agency up front, it would mean that Vermont's government will have to wait until the next fiscal year to get the money back for these projects.

With climate disasters becoming more common, Vermonters fear that they'll be left behind and that the cycle will repeat itself with residents in another state experiencing a different weather-related crisis.

"When Hawaii [wildfires] happened, it just seemed like we faded off into the sunset," Cavlier said. "When the big storm (Hurricane Idalia) hits Florida that will be the next big thing."