In a familiar scene, Scott administration officials address Vermont’s latest round of flooding

Updated at 4:03 p.m.

In a bizarre and bleak scene, a gathering of state officials Thursday morning at the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s Berlin outpost felt like an episode of déjà vu — straight out of last summer’s prolonged period of flood recovery.

Many of the same state leaders touched on many of the same topics they’d addressed week after week following the Great Vermont Flood of 2023 . But this time they’d assembled to update Vermonters on the latest round of severe flooding that hit the state late Wednesday.

“It’s not lost on any of us the irony of the flood falling on the one-year anniversary to the day when many towns were hit last year,” Gov. Phil Scott said at the Berlin press conference. “I know that only adds to the emotion many are feeling this morning — even those who were not impacted that time around.”

Scott stood at the same podium, in the same building that housed the state’s flood response team for months last year, after many state office buildings in Montpelier were rendered unusable by floodwaters.

He was surrounded and supported by a familiar cast of crisis communicators: Commissioner of Public Safety Jennifer Morrison, Urban Search and Rescue Coordinator Mike Cannon, Secretary of Transportation Joe Flynn, Commissioner of Mental Health Emily Hawes.

Commissioner of Environmental Conservation Jason Batchelder filled in for Julie Moore, the secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, as she traveled back from Washington, D.C., where she had been testifying to Congress about last year’s floods.

Officials rattled off statistics similar to last year’s storm: 118 people and 15 household pets saved by swift water rescue teams, 54 state roads closed, four boil water notices in effect.

“​​We’re better at it, in some respects,” Scott said, reflecting on responding to another natural disaster just one year later. “We’ve learned a lot from the last storm, as we did before that in [Tropical Storm] Irene, and we just take the lessons learned.”

By 10:50 a.m., rain once again began pelting down outside. As the noise of the rain grew, state officials and reporters craned their necks or turned around to look wearily out a nearby window.

While the parallels between the floods last summer and this week were apparent, the two events were hardly identical. Last summer’s disaster was a slow burn — exacerbated by weeks of unusually rainy conditions, followed by a lengthy downpour throughout the state. Wednesday’s deluge, part of the tail end of Tropical Storm Beryl, hit harder but for a shorter period of time and over a smaller swath of Vermont.

If anything, Scott said Thursday, this week’s flooding was more akin to Irene, which barreled through Vermont in 2011.

“(Irene) was almost a one-day event,” he said. “Then the next day, we all woke up, the sun was shining, and we went to work.”

If forecasts hold, the same could be true by this weekend, “so the recovery response should be fairly quick,” Scott said.

Some communities hit hardest last year, such as Montpelier, seemed to have dodged a bullet Wednesday night. Just seven miles southwest, Barre couldn’t say the same, its downtown and North End neighborhood once again getting inundated with several feet of floodwaters Wednesday night. When the water subsided by Thursday morning, it revealed a familiar thick, sludgy mud coating the streets and sidewalks.

Meanwhile, other communities were smacked by Wednesday’s deluge even harder than last year’s. In Plainfield, water rushed through the former college town, sweeping away buildings and bridges.

Many Vermonters walloped by last year’s flood were still waiting for meaningful assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help rebuild. As for this latest storm, the White House as of Thursday afternoon had yet to issue a disaster declaration to the state. That would mobilize a FEMA response and potentially open up financial aid to public infrastructure or individuals.

Last year, President Joe Biden issued an initial emergency declaration to the state within a day, on July 11, followed by a major disaster declaration on July 14 .

Asked how confident he was that Biden would do the same this year, Scott told reporters, “We’ll have to see.” Morrison encouraged Vermonters to report flood damages to the state’s 211 helpline so the state could craft a comprehensive report of the storm, helping to make the case for a federal declaration.

As for any additional money from the feds — not in the form of loans — Vermont was still waiting to receive its requests from last year’s flood. On Thursday, Scott said the state’s pleas for supplemental funding from Congress were “somewhat ongoing.”

“It’s tough for Congress to get anything done at this point in time, and we’re looking for other avenues, and we’re working with the congressional delegation to do that,” Scott said. “There are buckets of money and other programs … to get to the goal, and we’ll get there eventually.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In a familiar scene, Scott administration officials address Vermont’s latest round of flooding .