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| Homes damaged by flooding back in July in Cambridge, Vermont being flooded again on Tuesday. How many floods like this can people take before they give up? |
Given the serious flooding we had this week, I have to wonder if some Vermonters will soon join the ranks of those climate refugees. Monday's flood was an agonizing setback.
As climate-related disasters swirled around the United States and the world, Vermont felt at least temporarily safe from all that.
We seemed to blissfully escape the scary, dangerous stuff as the decade of the 2020s opened.
Maybe after the disastrous flood and windstorm of Halloween, 2019, we'd be safe for awhile.
Sure, we had our extremes. Record heat, some droughts, some wind storms hit in 2020, 2021 and for most of 2022. But it wasn't anything to get too worked up about. We felt safe.
But I had a feeling the other shoe would drop. And it definitely has in the past 12 months.
A storm on December 23, 2022 brought historic wind gusts that caused extensive damage through wide swaths of Vermont. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington recorded a wind gust of 70 mph, its second highest gust on record. Power was cut to more than 70,000 homes and businesses.
Flooding also closed roads and damaged property. Then a flash freeze and mini-blizzard halted travel on Vermont roads that evening.
On May 18 of this year, after what had been a remarkably warm spring that prematurely allowed crops and blossoms to sprout, a hard freeze hit. The one-night frost decimated much of Vermont's apple and strawberry crops, and caused extensive damage in the vineyards of the state's burgeoning wine industry.
Those two events weren't primarily flood disasters, but they were unsettling.
Then the summer floods hit. As we know, the worst of it hit on July 10 and 11 with communities from Ludlow to Barre and Montpelier to Johnson suffering devastating blows.
This wasn't a one shot deal either, Repeated localized flash floods from the end of June into mid-Augusts expanded the destruction.
Each of these events resulted in disaster declarations for different parts of Vermont. I have a feeling this latest storm will also put the Green Mountain State under a disaster declaration.
SO NOW WHAT?
Although the storms have varied, flooding is the biggest risk here in Vermont. One has to wonder how much more people can take, Some homeowner and business owners have now suffered damage twice in five months.
Monday night's flood crest of 17.58 feet on the Lamoille River in Johnson means half of the top 10 worst floods there have occurred just since 2011.
Who would want to deal with that?
We are already seeing signs that the repeated floods are eroding the sense of community as much as they eroded riverbanks and streets. After being inundated several times, owners of the grocery store in Johnson opted not to reopen the business, which had five or six feet of water inside it on July 10-11. (At last report, another brave business person might open a store in that location, we'll see).
WPTZ-TV last night aired an interview with two women whose house in Cambridge was trashed in the July flood. They were almost done fixing things when the latest flood damaged their home again. They looked tired. The two said they are staying in Cambridge. But will all their neighbors do the same?
I also wonder how residents and businesses owners in communities like Ludlow, Barre, Montpelier and Waterbury will keep sticking it out with the threat of more and more frequent, destructive floods.
If people abandon these communities, it would be part of a national, and probably worldwide trend, judging from that report about 3.2 million Americans moving to new locations due to climate disasters.
"Many of those areas are in parts of the country that also have seen a surge of migration during the past two decades, including Sun Belt states such as Florida and Texas. Such communities risk an economic downward spiral as population loss causes a decline in property values and local services, the group found."
Vermont is regarded as sort of a "climate refuge," but as I wrote in July during our flood siege, that might be a bit of an illusion.
Many of our nicest, most cohesive towns and small cities are in flood plains. Which makes the risk of people abandoning Vermont town centers even more fraught than in other areas. That downward economic spiral CBS mentioned could hit all of our wallets here in the Green Mountain State.
One of Vermont's signature images is its tight knit towns and relative lack of commercial sprawl. It's one of the main reason lots of tourists are drawn to the state.
Unfortunately, many of these beautiful old towns and small cities were built in flood plains. When they were built, their location was one of necessity, as the rivers helped supply power and served as commercial routes.
These towns generally have stopped needing rivers for these purposes long ago. So is the repeated floods brought on by climate change worth the risk?
Likely channeling all of us, Gov. Phil Scott during his press conferences about the latest flood used words like "gut punch" and "heartbreaking." How many gut punches can people endure before they give up on their downtown/flood plain businesses and homes?
We're going to find out in the coming years and decades, and the end result might not be pretty. As these floods keep coming, Vermont will become a much less familiar place.
To me, anyway, as a lifelong Vermonter, that would be a tragedy.
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