Norwich
Municipalities stand to receive substantial help if they are situated in an area ruled eligible for federal relief. Homeowners, on the other hand, have almost no chance of collecting insurance payments unless they are among the few who bought separate flood policies.
In the case of the Glick-Frishtick household, the impediment is a chasm at least 15 feet deep that opened up last Saturday as heavy rains swept away a culvert that connected their driveway to New Boston Road.
“We’re lucky in a way in that Jonathan was on the other side when it happened,” Glick said in an interview on Friday. “He was on the other side and we knew that he couldn’t get home.”
Frishtick, who was working at King Arthur Flour, was able to park his car at a neighbor’s house on the other side of the canyon that separates the family from the road. For the past week, the couple has been hiking up another side of the wooded hill where their house stands to avoid the rift.
Glick expressed gratitude for the support the community had offered.
“We had neighbors say, ‘Whatever you need; we saw what happened; we’ll get you a car,’ ” she said.
Vermont emergency management officials on Thursday requested a federal tally of damage from the storm, taking a necessary step toward receiving disaster aid as the state’s own count reached at least $2 million.
In New Hampshire, town leaders in Lyme estimated total damage to be about $6 million, according to an email sent to the town email list on Friday on behalf of the Selectboard. Orford officials put out similar numbers in a preliminary count earlier this week.
Of the Vermont towns, “Thetford was the most impacted,” Selectboard Chairman Stuart Rogers said on Thursday. “We have sections of roads that will not be repaired for a year.”
Rogers, who estimated that the storm had damaged 75 percent of the town’s roads and could cost upwards of $1 million in repairs to public property, said town leaders were concerned about forecasts for this weekend, which included the possibility of thunderstorms on night and this morning, along with gusty winds.
“The lack of wind saved us somewhat Saturday,” he said, noting that trees are apt to fall on power lines when wet ground combines with strong winds.
Rogers said town officials were hoping for the best as this weekend approaches. “That’s what we’re doing, because at this point there are a lot of first responders out there that are very tired.”
Federal Emergency Management Agency will use Vermont’s damage estimates to help determine whether the state qualifies for federal aid by having incurred at least $1 million in eligible costs at a rate of $3.61 per capita in each affected county.
Should those thresholds be met, Gov. Phil Scott may forward a request for a disaster declaration to FEMA.
If FEMA does step in, communities would receive a 75 percent reimbursement for response and recovery costs, including repairs to local roads, public buildings and other municipal assets. The state likely would kick in some as well, town officials said.
The same process is ongoing in New Hampshire towns such as Orford and Lyme, where the storm also took a heavy toll, dumping up to 7 inches of water in some places, according to residents’ and towns’ rain gauges.
“We suffered here in Orford somewhere in the area of $4 million to $5 million,” Fire Chief Terry Straight said on Thursday. “Most of that is public; we’ve lost entire roads in town.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on Monday came to Orford to survey the aftermath, which saw the loss of 4 to 5 miles of roads, Straight said. State officials were scheduled to visit town soon and begin the same damage estimating process as in Vermont, the fire chief said.
Straight said that his estimates of monetary costs did not include private property or state roads such as Route 25A, which was washed out entirely in some areas.
Local roads that were destroyed in Orford included Stevens Road, he said, as well as sections of Lower Stonehouse Mountain Road, Upper Stonehouse Mountain Road, Orfordville Road and Quinttown Road.
By Friday afternoon, trucks were able to pass on Quinttown Road, which had been covered over with fresh earth and gravel.
“THANK YOU,” read a sign on a mailbox, presumably addressed to road workers. “The road looks amazing.”
A few doors down, Cheryl Taylor pulled into the driveway of her parents’ house, returning home as her father, Ron, was out fetching an excavator to fill in yet another hole left by the weekend storm.
This particular gulf reached from the road to a nearby brook and passed under the family’s barn. Half of the structure perched precariously on solid land, and the other half leaned into space previously filled by dirt and gravel.
“Water was up to here” on Saturday night, Taylor said, indicating her knee. “It was amazing. When we had Irene, it wasn’t like this.”
Taylor said insurance adjusters had visited the property and indicated that the repairs wouldn’t be covered: as flood damage, it would have required a special policy.
Thanks to a decadesold quirk in the insurance industry, many property owners received the same bad news this week, according to Ken Parker of the Parker Agency, an insurance provider in White River Junction.
“I can tell you firsthand without any equivocation that there’s no coverage for any flooding,” he said by phone on Friday.
Parker would know. About 15 inches of water entered the basement of his Gates Street office on Saturday and knocked out an oil-fired water heater, a burner and the controls on his furnace, he said.
None of that was covered under his plan.
And “virtually every policy form” is the same, Parker said, thanks to a 1968 federal law that sought to limit losses on flood coverage — an expensive product for insurers — by giving control to the federal government.
These days, he said, most flood policies are with the National Flood Insurance Program, which is run by FEMA.
“We’re faced with people who are calling about damage in their basements because of the storm,” Parker said, “and we’re telling them, ‘You’re not covered unless you have separate flood insurance.’ ”
Parker, a former Hartford selectman, raised another issue in flood management and recovery: culverts.
During his tenure, the town began but did not finish a study on culverts believed to be at risk of failure because of their size, he said.
Parker lives on School Street in West Hartford, which now is riddled with trenches that in some cases are 3 feet deep.
“The damage that was done on School Street is illustrative of what the town needs to consider to avoid future problems,” he said, noting that a culvert higher up on the street was overwhelmed by water and “created effectively a landslide down the hill.”
Flood insurance, or the lack thereof, was a similar story for Glick and Frishtick in Norwich.
Although the couple is still obtaining estimates for repairs, they anticipate it will be expensive and not covered under their plan.
Glick, for one, seemed to be taking the circumstances well. She remarked that she and her husband had been “lucky” to have such supportive neighbors and a way to get around the broken driveway.
Then again, she said, “Wait until we get the bill — then maybe we won’t be so philosophical.”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.