Locals worry flood assistance won’t reach rural and remote Essex County

NORTON— For nearly a week, David T. Leidy’s Lake View Store went without deliveries.

July’s storm, which dropped 4.5 inches of water in Leidy’s rain gauge, knocked out Route 114 on either side of him, Norton to the west and Averill to the east.

A quick fix, he said, allowed cars — but not trucks — to resume travel along the state highway, which parallels the Canadian border in Essex County.

“There’s a lot of people that rely on me for their staples,” Leidy said, “I was really low on a lot of stuff.”

Norton has a full-time population of about 150, practically a metropolis compared to Averill’s roughly 20 permanent residents. Both communities swell in the summertime, with vacationers and camp owners flocking to Great Averill Pond and Lake Wallace, attracted to the isolation and serenity of Vermont’s most rural corner.

Essex County is the least populated, most rural and poorest county in the state.

And all of those attributes pose challenges to flood recovery, according to Terri Lavely, who works in training, development and advancement for Northeast Kingdom Human Services.

“This is the ruralest part of Vermont, and they don’t know to call 211, they don’t know where to reach out for resources,” she said. “It’s Vermont pride, too. You know, we kind of suck it up, do it ourselves. We’re not really good at asking for help.”

After last summer’s flooding, Essex County didn’t make the cut to qualify for the federal government’s individual assistance disaster declarations, which Lavely attributed to under-reporting of damage.

While Essex County communities haven’t garnered the attention for flood damage of some other hard hit communities farther south, the destruction was considerable.

Lavely said that Wednesday, she traveled to Lunenburg to check in on several households. While there, she met an elderly couple whose home flooded last week.

“This couple spent two nights in a hotel right after the floods because their house is uninhabitable right now. And then they couldn’t afford that, so they decided to stay in their car for an evening. We’re talking about an 82-year-old gentleman and his 79-year-old wife,” Lavely said. “The next day they were driving home and he fell asleep behind the wheel and totaled his car.

“So when I arrived at the home last night, he was like ‘screw it, we’re just gonna stay in the house,’ and three-quarters of their home is off the foundation. So, if we get one good rain, that house is gone.”

Lavely fears Essex County will once again miss out on assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency due to under-reporting of damage, even though communities like Lunenburg, Concord and Gilman were significantly impacted.

Houses and other property elsewhere in the county also sustained damage. Homes along Railroad Street in Island Pond near the Pherrins River took on water last week, according to Trevor Colby, Essex County’s sheriff, who also noted washouts in Maidstone and crop damage to corn and hay fields around the county.

On Wednesday, a week after the intense rains, a couple in Canaan who still had water in their basement was working to dry out, their driveway and yard ravaged by flooding. Three feet of water entered the home the week prior, and the basement smelled dank with mildew. Along Route 114 from Brighton to Norton and into Averill, driveways were washed out, roadsides eroded, and debris lie strewn beneath bridges and culverts, swept there by rushing water.

One silver lining, according to Lavely, is that local organizations are far more prepared than last year to respond to disaster. Groups such as Kingdom United Resilience and Recovery Effort, Northeast Kingdom Organizing, and a web of volunteers rushed into action, taking on “muck and gut” projects, as Lavely called them, or knocking on doors to check in on neighbors.

“We’re seeing a lot of folks who lost everything signing up to help others,” Lavely said. “It’s a pretty robust community effort, and it’s not really owned by anyone. It’s kind of managed by everyone, if that makes sense. It is absolutely amazing to see the difference between this year’s flood and last year’s flood.”

Still, it’s an uphill battle. Kari White helps lead the local long-term disaster recovery group, Kingdom United Resilience and Recovery Effort, and works to support health equity in the Northeast Kingdom. The group was engaged in canvassing across the region, and had received damage reports from Essex County but was worried about possible gaps.

“We are concerned about towns, smaller towns in Essex and Orleans, that don’t have the visibility and don’t have maybe the neighbor-to-neighbor networks or the sort of civic infrastructure to have kind of a coordinated, unified response,” White said. “I think we have learned that part of the challenge is, in fact, the huge land area of the Northeast Kingdom. It’s 55 different towns and municipalities.”

Many of the same characteristics that concern area service providers about successful flood response in Essex County appeal to its residents.

Leidy, who took over the Lake View Store eight years ago and now lives there, fell in love with the area’s isolated location and trusting community. People rely on him to make sure their camps are still standing after weather like last week, and they bring him their bucks to weigh during deer season and show him the lake trout they pull from the pond across the street in the summer. He knows the hunters, snowmobilers, and border patrol agents who frequent the store, and celebrates the never-lock-your-doors nature of the place.

“I don’t think anything should change up here,” he said, as two German Shepherds — Luna and Averill — played in front of his chair. “I don’t leave this area. I hardly ever leave this building.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Locals worry flood assistance won’t reach rural and remote Essex County .