For Sonny Singh, there was a cruelty to the timing of the latest flood to devastate his two-story home on Second Street in Barre City.
“Same day, same time, same situation … same second,” Singh said early Thursday morning. “Everything the same. Nothing has changed.”
Heavy rains have yet again caused widespread flooding across Vermont. Just like last July, Barre City was one of the hardest-hit communities in the state. And many of the neighborhoods that experienced severe damage last year watched helplessly Wednesday night as their homes got inundated again.
“Look at that basement is totally flooded, man,” Singh said, pointing at ceiling-high water through an open bulkhead.
Singh lives in this house with his brother, who bought the home two years ago, and four other people who work at his restaurant in Montpelier, called KSherpa Dinner House. Singh’s business is already flagging from reduced foot traffic in Montpelier due to last year’s flood. And this latest blow hits especially hard.
“Future is real bad, bro. In here there is no future,” he said. “Last year nobody can help me. I spent my money to fix that house. No government helped me.”
As Singh walked to the front of the house, he saw a yawning gap under the house where heavy currents knocked a piece of foundation off its footing.
“Look at how we are surviving,” he said.
Nearly all the homes on this tiny residential street in Barre’s North End saw significant flood damage Wednesday night. Barre City Manager Nicholas Storellicastro was in the city’s emergency operation center Wednesday night as 5 inches of rain once again turned streets into rivers.
“It was a real kick in the stomach last night,” Storellicastro said. “I think that you never want something like this to happen to your town. The fact that it happened on the anniversary of last year’s storm was harder than usual. If this had happened on July 24, I still would have hated it, but probably less.”
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Storellicastro said this latest flood doesn’t appear to be on the same scale as last year’s, which damaged or destroyed an estimated 10% of the city’s housing stock. But at least 30 people evacuated to a Red Cross Shelter at the Barre Auditorium Wednesday night. And many more are staying put in homes that may or may not be safe to live in.
Those residents include North End renter Nancy Parsons.
“I don’t know if I even have to move,” Parsons said Thursday. “Is it safe for me to stay here with all this damage? I mean the water and stuff? I mean, it’s hard to say.”
Parsons watched anxiously from the second floor Wednesday night as water overtook her car.
“It was a river. It was like you had currents, and it was just debris was floating by,” she said. “I mean I was just trapped. I was trapped … I was very scared.”
Parsons knew before she signed her lease that the apartment she moved into with her daughter last month had been flooded last July. But people looking for affordable units in central Vermont, she said, aren’t afforded much choice in where they live.
“I don’t know, I never thought it would happen. I guess people never think it’s going to happen to them. But when it does, it’s just like — I felt like I should have been more prepared,” she said. “I don’t know. It just makes you feel helpless.”
Help is on the way for residents of Barre City, thanks in part to the volunteers at Barre Up, a flood recovery organization that formed after last year’s flood.
Shawna Trader, one of the group’s founders, was gathering supplies with volunteers at the organization’s storage area in the basement of Barre City Hall.
“We’re mostly moving them to the North End,” Trader said. “We’ll be stationed at the Dollar General on the North End side of town, in the parking lot.”
Trader said Barre Up is dealing mostly with reports of flooded basements. And while flood waters may not have hit last year’s heights, she said some residents experienced more severe damage this year than last.
“It’s so unpredictable. It never strikes the same way twice,” she said. “So there are certain residents, depending where you are, and I’m imagining because of insecurities in infrastructure created by the last flood that are now exacerbated, and some people are actually having worse effects now than they did last year.”
Storellicastro said Wednesday’s flood has confirmed everything the city already knew about the long-term habitability of its lowest-lying areas. Redeveloping a more flood-resistant community will take time, he said. In the meantime, he said the city will work fast to clean up city streets and sidewalks to create at least a veneer of normalcy.
“I think I’m going to talk to the team about the importance of making sure like we don’t look like we’ve been hit, within the next couple days, so residents aren’t going through the trauma again,” he said.
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