Disaster Zone: Vermont Is One Of Nation's Biggest Disaster/FEMA Hot Spots

A large, destroyed culvert near Huntington, Vermont
after the big flash flood of July 10-11 of this year.
FEMA data shows Vermont is now one of the 
nation's most disaster-prone states. 

 It's only mid-August, and already two former hurricanes have caused damage in Vermont, either through severe flooding or high winds. 

The rest of the hurricane season is forecast to be busy, so that's not great news. That said, we could very easily get through the rest of 2024 without a tropical system having any effect on us. 

This brings me to an Associated Press analysis I ran across recently. The gist of it is that we associate coastal areas with big disasters, you know, hurricanes, storms.  Plus the West Coast with their earthquakes. 

Turns out, inland counties are the most disaster prone.  The article notes that counties far inland from any ocean are the top victims of disasters and most frequent recipients of aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

There's a nugget in there that's super interesting for us Vermonters: Says the AP:

"Eight of the nine counties with the most federal declared disasters since 2011 - more than a dozen each - are in Kentucky, with one in Vermont."

The nine counties mentioned have had four to five times the number of disasters as the national average for the past 13 years.

The mentioned Vermont is Washington, which has had 14 disaster declarations since 2011. The only county in the nation that has had more is Johnson County, Kentucky with 15.  Washington County, Vermont is tied with three other Kentucky counties for second place. 

Five other Vermont counties - Chittenden, Essex, Lamoille, Orange and Orleans, each had12 declared disasters in the past 13 years.  Addison and Franklin counties have had ten such designations. That's all   far above the national average. 

So much for Vermont being a refuge from the effects of climate change. 

The data comes from a report called Atlas of Accountability from Rebuild By Design, an organization that studies how overlapping environmental and human-made vulnerabilities leave communities at risk, and tries to find solutions to these vulnerabilities.  

A destroyed driveway in Richmond, Vermont on July 11
of this year after yet another disastrous flash flood. 

In the decade ending 2021, Vermont had 17 disaster declarations. Only ten states had as many or more than the Green Mountain State. 

Plus, some of the Top 10 states, like California, Texas and Oklahoma, have much more land area than Vermont, making those other states bigger potential targets for big storms. 

Moreover,  between 2011 and 2021, Vermont had the fifth highest FEMA and Housing and Urban Development costs per capita.

As we know all too well, Vermont's constant drumbeat of disasters and disaster declaration has continued in 2024. Five northern Vermont counties were declared federal disaster zones following twin wind storms in January. 

Vermont is also seeking a federal disaster declaration for the severe flash flooding of July 10-11. Yet another federal disaster might be declared for the July 30 flash flooding in the Northeast Kingdom.  

The data from Rebuild By Design also does not include the Vermont disaster declaration for severe flooding in December, 2023.  

The vast majority of the Vermont disasters are - to nobody's surprise - due to flooding. Climate change, as I've noted so many times, makes heavy rain events more likely. 

Many of Vermont's iconic towns and small cities were built in flood plains by necessity. They were mill towns,  needing the power of rivers to fuel their 18th, 19th and early 20th century economies. 

These towns and cities have always had floods. But now, they're more frequent under the regime of climate change. 

So, we face a reckoning. Whatever needs to be done to save these beautiful downtowns from an onslaught of frequent floods will be incredibly expensive. And disruptive as hell.  Will these communities be saved and how?

We just don't have the answers.  Organization like Rebuild by Design are there to help. But is the Vermont problem too big for even those experts to deal with?  It's a drama that will keep playing out over the coming few years and decades.