Flood report: chaos, community, and a very muddy Onion
As you get closer to Montpelier on route 2, you begin to see the piles. Saturated and muddy pyramids of couches, tables, books, people’s lives and livelihoods, stacked like trash on the curb of every house and every business. In the days after a historic juggernaut of a storm flooded central Vermont with up to 9 inches of rain, this is a scene repeated throughout Vermont.
The state capitol got hit pretty hard as the flooding Winooski River — typically a dribble of a waterway — filled the entire downtown. In other areas of Vermont, it’s far worse. Like Barre, where the flooding crushed the downtown area and left behind earthquake-type buckled roads. Or Ludlow and Londonderry, where mudslides accompanied the high-water flooding. Or in other remote areas, where there were a dramatically high number of swift water rescues need to fetch those stranded on rooftops or in their cars.
For those of a certain age, those who were in Vermont in 2011 when Tropical Storm Irene wound its way up the Green Mountain corridor, the whole thing is all way too familiar (LINK, LINK, LINK).
One of those people is Jen Roberts of Onion River Outdoors, a cornerstone specialty shop located in the heart of the Montpelier downtown area that has been a part of the central Vermont outdoor community for decades, and has seen the impacts of the flooding Winooski before. Once as an employee working in the shop, and now — for the first time — as the store co-owner with her husband Kip.
On Thursday morning, Jen stepped out the back door of her shop in rain gear, hood up, and headed toward a parking lot that was overflowing with racks, tables and boxes full of very wet, very muddy outdoor gear. She smiled and gave me a friendly hug, just as she would’ve normally done on any given day in any given summer. But today was different. Very different.
The scene yesterday at Onion River Outdoors was best described as “well-organized chaos.” There was the inventory to figure out (Toss it? Sell it?), the question of damage inside the store (Clean it? Repair it? Demo it?), and the still-flooded-to-the-ceiling basements that were starting to backfill with sewage (Uh yeah, don’t go down there). Their bulk of their inventory had been pulled out of the store and into the back parking lot to dry and sort, but it all needed to go back inside as the lot was needed for demolition work going on in the neighboring buildings. In literally every direction from the store, other businesses were all doing the same thing — trying to find a way to move forward amidst the bitter smell of river mud and the droning sounds of sump pumps and dehumidifiers. And, as if to rub salt in the wound, it was raining. Again.
As I was starting to check in with Jen, an awkward teen walked over and leaned in. Soaking wet in a tee shirt and black jeans with a clump of hair across an innocent young face, he broke in: “Um. Do you have any free tents?”
Jen tilted her head, smiled, and looked the young man in the eyes. “Talk to me. What’s your story?”
The teen said he was homeless and had heard that the store was giving away free camping gear. She gently gestured to a table at the far side of the parking lot that was covered in sleeping gear and other emergency supplies. “That’s the free table” she said with a genuine smile, “Take whatever you need.”
Even in this wildly uncertain moment for her business, surrounded by piles of garbage and rapidly mildewing inventory, it was inspiring to see how easily Jen still leaned in to supporting the community.
Jen's husband Kip was on the shop floor Monday as the storm arrived. Initially, like many Vermonters, he wasn’t too worried about it: “I thought we’d just need to move the high value things out of the basement.”
But the holy-shit moment arrived for Kip on Monday afternoon as the storm picked up steam and the nearby Winooski River began rising quickly. Kip called in volunteers and tried to move as much as possible up from the basement onto the main floor – a range of stuff that included everything from boxed up bikes to event supplies like banners and ski fencing.
At 7 pm, despite the fact the basement clearing job was still far from complete, the Winooski had other plans. It had jumped the bank and began filling the parking lot. Kip realized his window to get home was starting to close, and by the time he got on his bike behind the store, the water was well above his pedals, close to two feet in depth.
From home, Kip and Jen watched the video feed from their security camera, and saw the rising Winooski seep through the floorboards at around midnight. At some point in the early hours of the morning, it reached a high water mark of 27 inches inside the store.
The waters didn’t subside until midday Tuesday, at which point Kip and Jen — and other business owners and local residents — were able to begin the work of recovery.
Beyond the immediate cleanup, the economic next steps for Onion River Outdoors are a “question for another day." Because for the majority of business owners in downtown Montpelier, flood insurance is carried by the building owner, not the business owner renting the space, which means their inventories are largely unprotected.And even if they do have flood insurance, it is notoriously expensive and capricious, as was seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.
There are definitely other options for funding support, like FEMA and SBA, as well as a rising number of charitable organizations (see links below). Regardless, Jen said she had heard from some other Montpelier businesses that due to lack of a sufficient safety net, they’re going to have to shut down and walk away. When I asked her what the future looked like for Onion River Outdoors, she smiled yet again: “We’ll see.”
On the brighter side, the community-centric business model of Onion River Outdoors certainly provided them with a steady stream of volunteers to help with the cleanup work. “We had 50 people here yesterday,” said Jen, who said that an estimated thousand volunteers had descended on the Montpelier downtown earlier in the week.
One of the volunteers at Onion River Outdoors on Thursday was a 13-year old named Thea, a neighbor who’d been helping out at various times in the last 48 hours.
As I walked by, Thea was hosing off wooden hangers which had been coated in river mud: “I live nearby. I like this store a lot, and I just want to help.”
LINK: Onion River Sports disaster relief GoFundMe
LINK: Vermont Main Street Recovery Fund
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