Nearly a week after the storm, Vermont officials have a clearer picture of the damage wrought

Updated at 4:11 p.m.

Nearly a week since yet another bout of destructive flooding hit Vermont, the full picture of the storm’s damage began to come into focus Tuesday.

At a morning press conference in the state’s flood response center in Berlin, Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety Dan Batsie told reporters that the state’s 211 helpline had thus far received roughly 1,500 reports of flood-related damage, ranging from “minor flooding to major structural damage.”

Of those reports, Batsie said that there had been 50 homes reported as uninhabitable. The definition of uninhabitable is “subjective to the reporter,” he said, “so we can’t say that those homes are still uninhabitable, or that everyone in those 50 homes have necessarily been displaced.”

Additionally, Vermont Emergency Management had received more than 100 reports of flood damage to businesses and farms, Batsie said.

And while state officials have “shifted out of a life-safety posture and are now focused on the challenging work of recovery,” Batsie said emergency responders were still on standby, especially as the National Weather Service expected more thunderstorms in the coming days.

“While these storms are not anticipated to approach the level of destruction that the previous storm did, they do possess the capability to produce high winds, limited flash flooding and cause local power outages,” Batsie said. “Vermont’s large rivers are still high, but the predicted rainfall is not expected to cause them to exceed their banks or cause widespread flooding.”

Vermont’s infrastructure is faring better since last week, according to state officials. State road closures peaked at 54, according to Transportation Secretary Joe Flynn, and have since decreased to 12, as of Tuesday morning. Of those remaining road closures, eight are due to damaged bridges, Flynn said.

Vermont’s dams appear to be holding strong, according to Secretary of Natural Resources Julie Moore. She said that agency officials had surveyed more than 20 of the state’s dams since last week, and “I am pleased to report they’ve seen very limited damage.”

Two wastewater treatment facilities, located in Plainfield and Richmond, were impacted by the flood, according to Moore. While both facilities were functional, the secretary said “they sustained significant structural damage.”

As of Tuesday morning, six boil-water notices remained in effect in Barnet and Plainfield, Moore said. Boil water notices issued last week for Barre and St. Johnsbury have since been lifted, she said.

The agency has also received reports of 10 landslides caused by the flood — in Barton, Elmore, Jonesville, Lyndon and “many areas of concern from last summer in Plainfield that appear to have reactivated as a result of last week’s rain,” Moore said.

State officials were still collecting reports of flood damage from individuals, farms, businesses and municipalities alike. On Tuesday, they encouraged Vermonters to report any flood damage they sustained, in order to help build a case to the federal government for a disaster declaration.

When catastrophic flooding hit Vermont last July, President Joe Biden issued an initial emergency declaration to the state within a day, on July 11. He then issued a subsequent major disaster declaration to Vermont on July 14.

With those declarations, Biden unlocked millions in federal dollars to flooded Vermont municipalities and individual homeowners, and activated response crews from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the state.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Biden had not yet issued such a declaration to Vermont for last week’s storm. On Sunday, the state formally requested that FEMA conduct a damage assessment , in hopes of obtaining a disaster declaration.

Eric Forand, the director of Vermont Emergency Management, said Tuesday that the state was confident that damage from last week’s storm was “significantly over that threshold” to receive public assistance from FEMA to help rebuild municipal infrastructure in eight counties: Addison, Orleans, Washington, Caledonia, Chittenden, Lamoille, Orange and Essex.

The state also estimates that at least two counties, Washington and Caledonia, suffered substantial enough damage to individual homeowners to qualify for individual assistance.

“That does not mean that we can’t add as we go, as we continue to collect data, but those are ones that we felt very strongly about, so we wanted to get the process moving,” Forand said.

In order to secure that funding, officials emphasized that Vermonters should document their damages to 211, even if they do not think they need individual assistance. Documenting the scale of damage helps make the case to the feds to deliver assistance.

Asked why the White House had not issued a disaster declaration as quickly this year as it did last, Gov. Phil Scott pointed to the severity of last year’s storm, which, he said, led the feds to “expedite their declarations.”

“FEMA, the president, everyone was watching what was happening in Vermont. It was catastrophic, a great deal of damage,” Scott said. “But we’re back in the regular process at this point in time, where it’s going to take a little bit more time than it did last year.”

In the meantime, state officials on Tuesday announced their own flood aid initiative: Like last year, the state is again offering thousands of dollars to Vermonters whose cars were damaged by the floods, if they replace their flooded vehicles with an electric vehicle . Vermonters who qualify could bundle state incentives in order to receive up to $11,000 from the state to make the switch from a gas- or diesel-powered car.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Nearly a week after the storm, Vermont officials have a clearer picture of the damage wrought .