CT towns suffered millions in storm damage. ‘We need help,’ business owners say

SEYMOUR – With multiple towns still reeling from historic flooding, business owners were seeking help Monday to get back on their feet in a potentially lengthy rebuilding process.

Gov. Ned Lamont traveled to hard-hit Seymour to announce that the state will provide grants up to $25,000 each to businesses with fewer than 100 employees to help with clean-up and other expenses, reaching a total of $5 million.

The business owners said they need the funding as soon as possible and that most stores and homeowners lacked flood insurance because they were not in a floodplain. The massive downpour that dropped 14 inches of rain on Oxford in a single day stunned residents and represented a 1,000-year storm, officials said.

State commissioners in various departments have been working on the recovery for the past week, and businesses could potentially receive a grant within one week after applying when the system goes live on Sept. 3.

“We wanted to get this done fast,” Lamont told a large crowd of business owners and local officials who sought details on funding at the Klarides Village shopping plaza in Seymour that suffered major damage. “At the family diner … you see an enormous hole in the wall. You say ‘what happened there?’ That’s where the water, rushing by, took up a table and took out the wall. The same thing happened down at the nail spa. The same thing happened at Woodland Wines, where the water was right up to the bottom of the roof there. This all happened in an hour and a half, as sudden as that can be.”

Small businesses and nonprofit organizations need to apply for grants in Litchfield, New Haven and Fairfield counties to help replace equipment and replenish inventory that was damaged or washed away in the storm on Aug. 18. Up to 200 businesses could be helped in the immediate round of funding.

While final damage estimates have not been calculated, local officials said that the losses could potentially reach as high as $100 million each in places like Oxford, Southbury, and Seymour.

Lamont, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, and others gathered at the shopping plaza named for the ancestors of former state House Republican leader Themis Klarides and her sister, state Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria of Seymour.

While noting that loans will be available from the U.S. Small Business Administration and grants from FEMA, Themis Klarides called for swift action.

“But there’s nothing happening now, and these businesses are all family businesses,” Klarides said. “They put everything into making the business better, and they have nothing left.”

In an emotional speech, Klarides added, “Our grandfather started this, and our father and our uncles built it, and we are a family business. We have done everything and will continue to do everything we can to help them build back better and stronger, but we need help. We need it yesterday. As somebody who was in politics, I understand how difficult these things are, but I also understand this is a one in a thousand year storm. Nobody expected it, and you couldn’t prepare for it.”

A Hallmark Cards shop in the plaza has been operated by the same family since 1978, passing from some family members to others.

“We haven’t processed what’s going on,” said Christopher Headden, who co-owns the shop with his wife, Robin. “I’m sure the state is going to step in and not let the businesses fail.”

While Lamont and his economic development commissioner are overseeing state funding, Blumenthal and others are seeking to obtain as much federal funding as possible. President Joe Biden has issued a declaration of a disaster, but estimates are still being made and no final determination has been made on the precise amount of money that will be needed.

In the short term, officials want to get the businesses reopened so that workers can return to their jobs and shoppers can return to the stores. In the long term, elected officials are hoping to make infrastructure improvements to protect homes and businesses in the event of another major storm that hits multiple towns in the future.

Shocked residents have made comparisons to the 1955 flood that occurred almost 69 years to the day of the latest disaster that led to the deaths of two women who were swept into the raging waters of a waterway known as the Little River in separate incidents.

“This was truly an inland coastal catastrophe,” Blumenthal told The Courant on Monday. “It was truly an inland tsunami when that river became a torrent of destruction. … Nobody predicted 14 inches of rain in Oxford, but there were flash-flood warnings. People have become somewhat inured to these so-called flash-flood warnings. But there certainly was no real warning to Oxford or Seymour or Southbury or the towns that were targeted by this flash flood.”

Blumenthal visited the plaza after the storm hit last Sunday and then returned one week later.

Climate change

While residents have been concerned for years about issues like beach erosion and waterfront damage along Long Island Sound, the latest damage in places like Oxford, Seymour and Southbury are deeper into the state and miles away from the Sound.

“It’s truer than ever that climate change affects inland areas,” Blumenthal said. “I saw a 250-year-old dam in Southbury that was virtually destroyed. The flood of this small river blew away half of the dam. So the question is: should that dam be reconstructed? Should something else replace it? That’s a project for the geologists and hydrologists and environmental scientists, but the key word here is investment. We need to do more than reconstruct or replace what was there before. We need to invest in resilience.”

In Oxford, school will be starting later than expected as town workers and residents continue the clean-up from the storm. Both public roads and private driveways have been damaged in the region, and crews have been working to reopen roads that had been partially washed out.

In some cases, public school buses will need to be rerouted because of ongoing problems with the roads. The official opening day for school in Oxford still needs to be determined.

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com