story of the vt disaster relief fund

by the Vermont Long-Term Disaster Recovery Group

“We’re Going to Get It Done”

The Vermont Disaster Relief Fundand Vermont’s Response to Tropical Storm Irene

August 28, 2011. In the center of Wilmington, the full fury of Tropical Storm Irene.

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Vermont Long-Term Disaster Recovery Group

Board of DirectorsChris Graff

Montpelier, Chair

Doug BishopColchester

JoEllen CalderaraBarre

David CoatesColchester (Chair, 2011-13)

Bill ElwellBristol

Laurie HurdleWashington

Betsy IdeWinooski

Charlie KirekerWeybridge

Neale LundervilleSouth Burlington

Rep. Ann ManwaringWilmington

MaryEllen MendlColchester

From the Chairs

The waters of Tropical Storm Irene cut a path of destruction through Vermont not seen since the Great Flood of 1927. Roads, bridges, and houses simply disappeared. The incredibly powerful

floodwaters carried away cars, trucks, and fuel tanks, ripping apart communities and neighborhoods.

But before the winds and rain had even let up, Vermonters stepped up. They began helping their neighbors clean up and muck out. They provided food and clothing. They donated equipment. Some people drove hundreds of miles to volunteer, helping people they did not even know. The recovery was underway.

That same spirit created the Vermont Long-Term Disaster Recovery Group, a non-profit corporation engaged in coordinating local, regional, and state recovery efforts for Irene survivors, and with raising money for — and allocating money from — the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.

Thanks to the work of hundreds of people at the local, regional, and state levels, this effort was a success. There are really two stories behind that effort: First, there was the implementation of a people-first approach to allocating funds and aiding survivors in their recovery. Second was Building Vermont Strong, the Irene Recovery Campaign, the successful effort to raise the money that helped Irene survivors rebuild their lives.

The money came in fast and furious from so many varied sources. Vermont celebrities like Grace Potter and Keegan Bradley headlined fundraisers, the “I Am Vermont Strong” license plates raised more than $750,000, our political leaders organized fundraisers, and Vermonters reached deep into their pocketbooks to help out.

We are proud to share with you the story behind the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund. It is our way to acknowledge and thank the thousands of people who helped our neighbors in their moment of need.

We learned so much from Irene. We hope we never see anything like it again. But the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund and the long-term recovery group stand ready to step in when the next disaster hits.

Our thanks to everyone who contributed to Vermont’s recovery.

David R. Coates, founding chair (2011-2013)Chris Graff, chair (2014-present)

Researched and written by Doug Wilhelm of Weybridge (www.dougwilhelm.com)

Designed by Tim Newcomb, Newcomb Studios, Montpelier (www.newcombstudios.com)

From 2011-13, David Coates served as the founding chair of the Vermont Long-Term Disaster Recovery Group.

Chris Graff, current chair of the Vermont Long-Term Disaster Recovery Group.

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Contents

1. The Prelude and the Storm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Irene in Vermont: The Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2. Creating a Fund: “The Right People in the Right Seats” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3. Building the System: “We’re Going to Do It Our Way” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 “Look What People Can Do”: The “I Am Vermont Strong” Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4. Communications: “We Had to Keep This Front and Center” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Stepping up for Mobile-Home Survivors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

5. “We Need to Raise This Money Now” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 “A Strong Web of Connectedness”: How a Regional Committee Rose to the Task . . . . . . . . . . 22

6. Allocations: The “Block-and-Tackle Work” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 From Household to Household: In Windham County, a Case Manager Assembled Solutions . . . 26 “We Have a House. We Survived”: In Wilmington, One Family’s Path to Recovery . . . . . . . . . 27

7. “The Best of Vermont” — Summing Up and Looking Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 From a Destroyed Mobile Home to a New Life in Websterville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30


“As we began to look at the mucking-out of homes and that kind of thing, it became clear that there was a gap in how to get money for folks,” Elwell recalled. Individual Vermonters were often unable to get enough financial help — from various combinations of personal resources, private

insurance, and public relief funds like FEMA grants — to meet the full costs of repairing, rebuilding, or replacing their homes.

Mobile homes in the Barre area had been especially hard-hit; many of their owners were in tight spots, with scarce personal resources. So that July, VOAD members, state officials, and FEMA’s voluntary-agency liaison for the Northeastern region had begun talking about creating a long-term fund for disaster relief. Its goal would be to close the gap: to raise money that would cover the costs of home repairs or replacements that individual Vermonters were otherwise unable to meet after a disaster.

Elwell had also sought and received funding for an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer, to help coordinate the remaining flood-relief work out of the Bristol church.

The VISTA worker’s first day would be Tuesday.

“We were just in shock”On Saturday, Tropical Storm Irene

made landfall in North Carolina’s Outer

In a community flood-relief center in Barre, Vermont, JoEllen Calderara led a meeting on Friday, August 26, 2011 to decide whether to close the facility. Though she also held a

full-time job, since June Calderara had been volunteering about 40 hours each week as the center’s coordinator, organizing help for area residents whose homes had been damaged or destroyed by flash flooding from heavy spring rains.

Vermont had received expert assistance and emergency funding from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for the flood-recovery efforts — but now the work was largely done. Should the center close up? Calderara wasn’t sure; she had heard warnings that a tropical storm called Irene, then moving north from the Caribbean, might be worse than predicted. The group decided to wait. Though hurricanes usually hit coastal regions, Vermont could sometimes be affected.

The next day in Bristol, Rev. Bill Elwell, pastor of the United Methodist churches in this town and nearby Monkton, was finishing a sermon for Sunday on preparedness. A volunteer firefighter for 28 years, he was the chair of VOAD, Vermont Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, a network of churches, the Red Cross,

1. The Prelude and the Storm

the Salvation Army, the United Way, and other groups that respond to disasters. Elwell had also been volunteering almost full-time since late spring, helping organize relief work for the floods that had hit five counties, from the Champlain Valley to the Northeast Kingdom.

Irene in Vermont: The Impacts

Deaths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Municipalities affected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225Communities temporarily cut off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13Homes damaged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,500+Homes with over $10,000 in damage . . . . . . . . . . . . 681Mobile homes damaged or destroyed . . . . . . . . . . . . 525Households displaced, temporarily or permanently . . . . 1,400Acres of farmland flooded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,000State highway miles closed, August 28, 2011 . . . . . . . . 531Bridges damaged or destroyed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311Town highway segments damaged . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,260FEMA Individual Assistance claims registered . . . . . . . 7,252Number of FEMA Individual Assistance grants provided . . 4,300Average FEMA Individual Assistance grant . . . . . . . $5,623No. of maximum ($30,200) FEMA Ind. Asst. grants . . . . 160Meals provided to Vermonters and volunteers . . . . . 16,000+Number of of food shelves that provided free food . . . . . 60+


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Irene’s aftermath in Rochester.


Banks and began moving up the East Coast. In the Mid-Atlantic region, the core of the cyclonic spiral veered inland and began to move up the Hudson River basin. High winds and very heavy rains were now predicted for Sunday, August 28 on the New York side and, especially, for Vermont on the east.

What unfolded that Sunday was the worst natural disaster in Vermont since the Great Flood of 1927. Before Irene’s rains receded, six Vermonters had lost their lives and some $733 million in damages had been inflicted in southern, central, western, and eastern regions of the state.

“I started getting reports from southern Vermont, where I was born and raised,” said Governor Peter Shumlin — “my brother talking about places that he had just driven through in Windham County, that he was describing around our farm as flooded out. I said, ‘Jeff, that’s impossible! There’s not even much of a brook there.’ He said, ‘I’m just telling you, I couldn’t even get through there in my three-quarter-ton, four-wheel-drive truck.’”

As much as numbers can express it, the box on page 3 sums up the damage. Thirteen communities were cut off. Over 3,500 homes, including some 500 mobile homes, were damaged or destroyed, along with over 300 bridges and more than 500 miles of highways. In all, 225 Vermont municipalities reported storm damage.

At mid-afternoon Sunday in Bristol, Bill Elwell and another firefighter drove up to Bartlett Falls, a popular swimming hole on the road to Lincoln. A crowd had gathered to stare at the roiling New Haven River. Though the swimming hole was in a gorge with a 14-foot waterfall, the river had swollen almost up to the road.

“It was incredible,” Elwell said. “We stopped and said, ‘Folks, you need to go home.’ We turned around — and as we did, we watched in our

rearview mirrors half of the road from here to Lincoln just wash away. We watched it fall. That’s how I started with Irene.”

“By midnight,” Gov. Shumlin recalled, “we had evacuated our state hospital. We were evacuating our state office complex in Waterbury.”

The next day, Vermonters woke up to a state

that would be forever changed.“We were just in shock on Monday morning,”

said Peter Plagge, pastor at the Waterbury Congregational Church.

“I saw people walking around ... nobody was doing anything. Then, just four hours later, everybody was doing something.”

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Ian Gile clears flood-damaged belongings from his family home, next to the Dog River in Berlin.


Among the homes destroyed by the flooding White River along Route 107 in Bethel.John Lazenby


2. Creating a Fund: “The Right People in the Right Seats”

In early September, David Coates got a phone call asking him to come to Montpelier and meet with Gov. Shumlin. A retired executive in Colchester who serves as a director of National

Life Group, Green Mountain Power, and several other firms and organizations, Coates is among Vermont’s most respected business leaders, and has been tapped for key advisory roles by the last several governors, of both parties.

“I turned to my wife and said, ‘Margaret, the governor wants me to take part in the Irene recovery efforts,’” Coates recalled. “‘I’m not sure what it entails, but knowing this governor, it won’t be a routine task.’”

It wasn’t. Shumlin had picked up on the need for a statewide, long-term recovery group that VOAD members had been discussing — and he asked Coates to chair its board. The group’s main role would be to raise funds, then disburse them as “last-resort” funding for individual home repair or rebuild projects, beyond what could be covered by personal

“Water flowing at seven miles per hour downstream is the equivalent of a 300 mile per hour wind. That’s the first thing they told me at FEMA, and it

blew my mind. I wrote it down, and I would tell everybody — that’s the power.”David Coates

resources, insurance policies, local fundraising, and government aid.

Coates quickly agreed. It was a very big task. Some 1,400 Vermont households had been displaced, temporarily or permanently. As a

massive relief effort swung into gear, starting with local volunteers who quickly pitched in to help their neighbors, Vermonters were also eager to make donations. Dozens of local and regional fundraising efforts sprang up across the state; the

rock bands Phish and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals headlined two of many musical fundraisers. In a single day, Vermont Public Radio raised $622,582.63 for the Vermont Long-Term Recovery Group, the group that Coates would lead.

But legally speaking, that organization didn’t yet exist. The

Shane Raymond, Evan Rogers, and Chris Rogers hike up Camp Brook Road in Bethel to reach their home in Rochester, 14 miles over a mountain pass. Immediately after the storm, walking this route was the only way to get from Bethel into Rochester; large sections of the road had been destroyed by flooding.Jo

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United Way stepped up to serve as its temporary fiscal agent, accepting donated funds while Coates began to assemble a brand-new nonprofit organization.

“David is extremely well respected across the state,” said Neale Lunderville, whom Shumlin tapped after the storm to direct the state’s Irene

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At Terri Christie’s house in Waterbury — as in so many other flooded-out homes — what could be salvaged was often irreplaceable.

Green Mountain Club employees, usually caretakers of Vermont’s Long Trail, helped with the cleanup at the Whalley mobile home park in Waterbury. From left are J.P. Krol, Josh Kinsel, Kathryn Wrigley, and Zoe Linton.

Recovery Office. “He’s known as somebody who not only will get things done, but also is a man of his word, of very high integrity.

“So when David says, ‘We’re going to start a fund, and that fund is going to be used for helping the survivors of Irene,’ people know that was something you could count on.”

“How can we get something done?”“I wanted to make sure exactly what the ground

rules were, from the governor, so I sat with him, his chief of staff, and his attorney,” Coates said. “They kind of laid out the way they saw it — but then they said, basically, ‘You’re on your own. You’ve got to organize it the way you think it should work.’”

Coates connected with Elwell, the minister and VOAD chair who became the new organization’s vice chair, then later its director of allocations. Elwell helped clarify the difference between flood relief, which is relatively short-term emergency work that meets the most immediate needs, and flood recovery, which after a disaster like this can take two to three years, if not more.

“The first thing we had to do was create a board, Bill and myself,” Coates said. “In the meantime, I’m getting calls to be with the governor, wherever he was, to talk about the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.”


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In Waterbury and elsewhere, townspeople and other volunteers quickly formed cleanup crews.


Detra and Joe Mailhiot, Rochester homeowners, met with American Red Cross caseworker Lori Dolain shortly after the storm. The chain of assistance and support for storm survivors stretched from the Red Cross and other first-on-the-scene providers all the way to the VDRF, which delivered “last resort” funding and other help to the Mailhots and many other Vermonters.

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reeOver and over, as he traveled the flood-struck

regions of the state, Shumlin was making a promise: “To the hundreds of Vermonters who lost so much — lost their house, lost their belongings, lost the land that their homes rested on or the land they tilled, we will stand with you in the long recovery that lies ahead.”

“We were dealing with a lot of different groups,” Elwell recalled: “with people who were desperate, and with people who had resources. In a sense, we were creating a bridge between the people that wanted to help, and the people that needed help.”

To meet that challenge, Coates knew the new organization had to be nonpolitical, and it had to have a strong mix of committed people who could bring the needed connections and expertise. “You’ve got to have the right people on the bus, in the right seats,” he said.

Coates and Elwell quickly kindled a strong relationship. “I just fell in love with David,” Elwell said. “There was no head-butting; it was just, ‘How can we get something done? How do we help people?’”

“You rebuild homes ... you rebuild lives”In the first weeks after Irene, before winter

could set in, National Guard units and national relief organizations worked long, intense hours with FEMA, state agencies, nonprofit and church-based organizations, and legions of volunteers. Communities that had been cut off were reconnected; displaced people were sheltered as more than 16,000 free meals were served to Vermonters and volunteers.

By December 29, all 531 state-highway miles, and all 34 state bridges, that had been closed were reopened. All state-owned railway lines that

had been damaged were carrying traffic again — and among 2,260 flood-damaged town highway segments, just 21 were still closed.

Amid all this work, Shumlin on September 26 announced the creation of the Vermont Long-Term Disaster Recovery Group. Among its tasks, he said, the group would raise money for the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund. Its new board soon agreed that this pairing of names could get confusing — so the effort became known publicly as the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund. Its Articles of Incorporation were drawn up by attorney Kathleen Boe of Middlebury. Accountant John McSoley of South Burlington handled the IRS filings.

The all-volunteer board included three members

named by the governor, three chosen by VOAD, and three more picked by those first six. Handling the vital communications work would be Chris Graff of Montpelier, vice president for public affairs at National Life Group and former Vermont bureau chief for the Associated Press. Helping lead the fundraising would be Charlie Kireker of Weybridge, a co-founder of Fresh Tracks Capital, a prominent venture-capital firm that had made early-stage investments in a number of Vermont businesses.

Board member JoEllen Calderara, the flood-relief organizer whose professional work was coordinating the Barre office of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, would play a central role in


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connecting the effort to Vermonters who needed help. Doug Bishop of Colchester, director of communications and external relations for the American Red Cross of Vermont & The New Hampshire Upper Valley, would soon chair the Allocations Committee, and later became the board’s vice chair.

Other members included Ann Manwaring of Wilmington, a state representative from hard-hit Windham County; Laurie Hurdle of Washington,

a VOAD member who represented the Southern Baptist Convention, which is very active in disaster relief; and MaryEllen Mendl of Colchester, director of the United Way project Vermont 211, a resource connector that quickly began receiving calls from Vermonters with storm damage. Mendl became treasurer of the Fund.

As autumn gave way to winter, Coates and his board embarked on their long-term task. They needed to raise millions of dollars, nearly all in

private donations, and to create the system that would allocate those “funds of last resort,” while also helping connect flood-struck Vermonters to all the resources available to them.

“The three Rs in disaster recovery are response, relief, and recovery — and the recovery is where we jumped in,” said Coates. “That’s where you rebuild the homes; and, I always say, you rebuild lives. Because that’s what it’s all about.”

“The ‘Woodchip Parkway,’ a footpath on a former town road no longer in use, was resurrected and became the main thoroughfare for traffic from Rutland to Killington for the 18 days that Route 4 was being rebuilt,” recalled Mendon Town Clerk Ann Singiser. “Over 14,000 people used the path to get to and from work in Rutland and Killington, to get out to the store for supplies, etc. It was a tremendous volunteer effort to manage the trail.” These children are walking to meet the school bus. (Photo courtesy of the Town of Mendon)

Rosemary Sprague, in front of the Northfield mobile home where she lived for 15 years before Irene flooded her out.


3. Building the System: “We’re Going to Do It Our Way”

One morning in late October at the Bruegger’s Bagel Bakery in Burlington, David Coates and Stuart Comstock-Gay did some figuring on a napkin.

Comstock-Gay is president of the Vermont Community Foundation, which played a very active advisory and support role as the VDRF came together. Said Coates, “We became linked at the waist! We followed each other around.” The foundation had created post-Irene funds to support farm relief, nonprofit organizations, mobile home parks, and the Red Cross. It was also steering donors toward the Disaster Relief Fund, to support individual recovery.

“When there’s a disaster, you give now and you give later,” Comstock-Gay explained. “You want people to get over the hump of the first two months. The Disaster Relief Fund was there to help people over the long term.”

That morning on the napkin, the two men made some long-term calculations. FEMA had invited Vermonters who had suffered storm damage to apply for its individual assistance grants. Its predictions of the number of Vermont claims likely to be filed came close to the 7,200 that ultimately were filed. John Stewart, FEMA’s liaison, had estimated that 5-15% of those claimants would need last-resort funding, beyond what could be covered by private insurance, personal resources, locally raised funds, and public aid like FEMA grants.

“We figured we were going to have to fund 800 cases. We estimated $12,000 per case,” Coates said.

That multiplied to just under $10 million — so raising that amount became the goal of the new Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.

“Within a week, we were being interviewed on the radio together,” Coates recalled. “I always re-member the interviewer saying, ‘That’s more money than you can raise. So tell me, David, what are you going to tell the folks when you run out of money?’ I said, ‘We’re not going to run out of money.’”

At the same time, what would become the system for allocating that money was already in the process of developing.

“I started, right after Irene, hosting a weekly conference call,” Bill Elwell said. “That brought in some of the national partners, from across the country, and connected them with the local long-term recovery committees.”

Nine local or regional long-term recovery committees were coming together in the affected areas. Volunteer case managers were starting to connect those groups to survivors, making outreach visits and beginning to help those with lost or damaged homes apply for FEMA grants, and seek other available help and resources.

Townspeople in storm-battered communities came together to organize, assist, and encourage everyone’s recovery. This gathering was in Rochester, soon after the storm.

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In Rochester the morning after Irene, “that ‘Free Breakfast’ sign was such a wonderful feeling of relief,” said Amy Wildt, who photographed her daughter Katie Jane Keown with the sign. “There was no power, no water. People had lost their houses or were stranded in town — and to see that welcoming sign at the Huntington House was just incredible.”


Elwell and his VOAD partners saw the potential in that community-based approach.

“Vermont is locally organized, and we take great pride in that — so the wording I used in a lot of my conversations was developing a long-term recovery network,” Elwell said. “We were bringing together anybody that wanted to help and saying, ‘Okay, how can we work together on this?’ It was a total grassroots thing.”

When the Fund began to review bids for individual recovery awards, Elwell said, “we had Allocation Committee members who were part of VOAD organizations — so we would say, ‘What if we could get a group that could come help muck that out? That would lower the cost, help the dollars go farther.’ So that type of stuff just naturally happened.”

In November, Elwell became the Disaster Relief Fund’s first staff member, as its full-time director of allocations. His salary would be paid through a new type of FEMA grant: Vermont was to receive $2.4 million, as one of the first three storm-hit states awarded grants under FEMA’s new Disaster Case Management program.

Channeled through three community action agencies in affected areas, the money funded the hiring of 11 professional case managers. They would be trained by UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief. The case managers would work closely with the local long-term recovery committees, and with Elwell and the allocations process of the Disaster Relief Fund.

“John Stewart [of FEMA] said to me, ‘We’re facing a marathon, not a sprint. You’re not going to get this done in six months,’” Coates recalled. “So I took that advice. I said, ‘We’re going to get it done in a year.’”

“You couldn’t put it away. These were people”As 2011 came to an end, late one night in

the state’s Irene Recovery Office at the National Life Group’s headquarters in Montpelier, Neale Lunderville wheeled his chair over and put his feet up on Betsy Ide’s desk. He had an idea, and wondered what she would say.

The two had been working very long hours, coordinating the state’s response and the vast repairs to Vermont’s public infrastructure. It had been widely seen as a signal that the project would be nonpartisan when Shumlin, a Democrat, had named Lunderville, who had been chief of staff to Jim Douglas, the previous Republican governor, to lead the work.

To help him get so much work done, Lunderville, of South Burlington, had brought in Ide, a Winooski resident who had been a Congressional aide and then vice president of a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. Her father, Robert Ide, was commissioner of motor vehicles and had been a longtime state senator. “I basically grew up trailing my father around the State House,” Ide said.

She and Lunderville had connections all over state government, and they had worked well together. Now Lunderville was about to leave his post, to be replaced by Sue Minter for the next phase of recovery work. He would soon join the board of the Disaster Relief Fund.

“The last challenge for Neale and I, in our tenure, was the Fund,” Ide recalled. The organization needed an executive director. Ide’s task had been to find that person. So far, she just hadn’t had time.

“It was very late, and we were both exhausted,” she said. “Neale rolled his chair over and said,

‘About the Fund.’ I said, ‘I know. I have to do it, don’t I?’”

Soon after, Ide met with David Coates. “In five minutes, I knew this was a special individual,” he said. “I sent her down to see Stuart at the Commu-nity Foundation, and he said, ‘We’ll fund it.’”

With her salary covered by the foundation, Betsy Ide became the Fund’s executive director — and went right on working around the clock.

“She brought that element of hope,” Coates said. “When she was dealing with a problem, you knew it was going to get fixed.”

“You couldn’t stop! You couldn’t put it away, because these were people,” Ide said. “David used to introduce me as his staff of five. At one point I said, ‘That’s not funny any more, David.’”

Even though the Fund had set a multimillion-dollar goal for its fundraising, to Ide that seemed like the easy part. More daunting were the human needs Irene had left behind.

“You’d hear these stories that you just couldn’t believe,” she said — “that this person’s been living in the upstairs of his barn, with space heaters. And when you’ve helped him, he says, ‘You should get in touch with my neighbor, I think he’s had a much harder time.’ Vermonters are so resilient. To admit they needed help was hard.

“Experts like FEMA would give us advice,” Ide recalled — “and we would say, ‘Okay, but we’re going to do it our way. Because we’re Vermonters.’”

“Vermont has a great attitude. It wants to help people,” noted John Stewart, FEMA’s voluntary-agency liaison for the Northeastern U.S. “The attitude was, ‘Let’s do whatever it takes to help people recover from this disaster.’ And that mindset made all the difference.”


Everyone knows about the license plates. Created from a concept and design by two Rutlanders and sold for $25 by the Department of Motor Vehicles, the “I Am Vermont Strong” specialty plate became the most visible expression of Vermont’s recovery from Irene — and one

of the most affordable ways for Vermonters to support it. “The ‘I Am Vermont Strong’ plate is a symbol of our commitment,

financial and personal, to help every family find permanent housing and every Vermonter get back to work,” Gov. Shumlin said in February 2012, as he signed the legislation that authorized DMV to sell the plate and Vermonters to put it on the front of their vehicles.

Vermont has not issued many specialty license plates — but “this was a special thing,” said Robert Ide, DMV commissioner. “The state was hurting. A lot of people were not able to write a check for $25,000, but they could do this.” From the sale of each plate, which cost $5 to produce and sell, $18 was earmarked for the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund, $2 to the Vermont Food Bank.

“We’re going to sell them all over the place,” said State Sen. Dick Mazza, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee and a member of the Vermont Grocers

Association, which offered the plates for sale at all 130 member stores. Jay Peak Resort bought 1,000 plates to sell, and the Vermont Ski Areas Association, Cabot Cooperative Creamery, and the Vermont Chamber of Commerce all donated prizes for the drive to promote and sell the plates.

The idea and design for “I Am Vermont Strong” were developed by Eric Mallette and Liz Tomsunden of Rutland. They posted it first on

Facebook, then created a t-shirt that became popular very fast and led to the license-plate idea. Gov. Shumlin presented the first plate to Bernie and April Corliss of Berlin, who had survived the storm by hanging onto a tree, and who became the first recipients of help from the VDRF.

By June 2014, when new legislation enabled Vermonters to display the plates on vehicles for two more years, 39,660 license plates had been sold.

At one point in the unfolding of this story, Eric Mallette said to Bob Kinzel on Vermont Public Radio, “I stopped and said, ‘Holy cow. Look what people can do.’”

“Look What People Can Do” The “I Am Vermont Strong” Story

On February 9, 2012, Gov. Peter Shumlin hugs April Corliss after giving her the first “I Am Vermont Strong” license plate, as April’s husband Bernie looks on at right. Gov. Shumlin had just signed the license plate bill into law. Having lost their mobile home in Berlin during Tropical Storm Irene, the Corlisses were the first recipients of a recovery grant from the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.

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4. Communications: “We Had to Keep This Front and Center”

It’s been said many times that when people lose hope, they lose everything,” Neale Lunderville observed. “From the very beginning, we never wanted anybody to lose hope. It’s hard to

overstate how important that was.”As the Disaster Relief Fund began working from

late 2011 into 2012, keeping the public informed and motivated was essential, both for fundraising and for reassuring survivors that they were still a priority.

“We rebuilt the roads so fast,” Betsy Ide said of the state’s efforts — “so there was a little bit of, ‘Well, that’s done.’ But we were not done. We had all those families that were still not in their homes.”

“The governor did a lot to keep this front and center, as did [Lieutenant Governor] Phil Scott,” said Chris Graff, the Fund board member who coordinated communications. “We would go represent the Fund when anybody would raise money, and speak to those groups. David was tireless! He traveled the whole state.”

“I spoke everywhere; I was the public face,” Coates agreed. “Chris said we needed that, so I was on Vermont

Public Radio, Vermont Public Television, WCAX, Channel 5, Channel 22 — I was interviewed a lot. Bill Elwell and I did that together, but he didn’t want to be on camera, he wanted to be doing the work.”

“The media organizations were great — they never lost sight of it,” Lunderville said. “With the Disaster Relief Fund, we kept finding new angles, new stories to keep them going.” Vermont Public Radio, in particular, aired dozens of news reports,

updates, and feature stories. “It was pretty amazing what they did,” Lunderville said.

“Can you cover this?”“In some disasters,” Lunderville explained,

“people want to give in the first two or three weeks; but the bulk of giving for the Disaster Relief Fund had to come in during the following year. So from our perspective on the board, we had to keep this front and center in Vermonters’ minds.

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In the weeks and months after Irene, VDRF Chair David Coates spoke at countless fundraisers, benefits, and other gatherings that aided the recovery’s cause. At the 2012 annual meeting of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, he presented a wooden bowl, made from a tree that fell in the storm, to Antonio “Tony” Pomerleau, the Chamber’s 2012 Citizen of the Year. Pomerleau was honored in large part for his contribution to the recovery of mobile homeowners devastated by Irene.


For the people who were affected, it was still front and center, so it was easy for us to have the passion and to show the stories, show people there was still a huge need. And the Vermont media didn’t disappoint.”

Before joining National Life as its corporate-communications V.P., Chris Graff had led the Associated Press’s Vermont bureau for many years, and had hosted a weekly public-affairs program on Vermont Public Television. He guided the Fund in producing a brochure, creating a website, and issuing a number of press releases and informational materials.

“There was some confusion that we had to clear up,” Graff noted. “The Community Foundation was out working hard, Grace Potter was raising money for Waitsfield, Phish did a concert — and people were

confused about where that money was going. Part of our challenge was explaining that we were the funder of last resort. People wanted to know why we weren’t giving money out right away.”

“Chris brought the stature, as the elder statesman of the Vermont media, respected on both sides of the aisle,” Lunderville said. “He has an ear and an eye for what’s news, and was able to help get the media that we needed. A lot of that is

just picking up the phone and calling people. ‘Can you cover this, are you interested?’ He was a great spokesman for the group — somebody who could convey things in a way that was meaningful to Vermonters.

“Also Chris brought National Life. They’ve been one of the best continuous supporters of the Fund, on the level of Vermont Public Radio. Chris was the gateway to that.”

In part for donating $1 million to the VDRF to create the Pomerleau Cornerstone Fund, to assist in the recovery of mobile homeowners whose homes had been damaged or destroyed by Irene, Antonio “Tony” Pomerleau was named 2012 Citizen of the Year by the Vermont Chamber of Commerce.

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In my lifetime, I’ve never got anything — I’ve worked for every penny I had,” said Nancy Green, resident of Patterson Park in Duxbury, about the VDRF check that was paying for

her new mobile home, thanks to major donor Antonio “Tony” Pomerleau. “This is close to a miracle for me.”

Green was speaking to the Waterbury Record in April 2012, eight months after Irene had destroyed her mobile home and 132 others in Berlin, Brattleboro, Duxbury, Sharon, Waterbury, and Woodstock. Mobile homes often lie in flood plains and other low-lying areas. In all, 226 mobile homes in 17 parks around the state were flooded; 525 mobile homes (the total number damaged in parks and on private lots) received some form of FEMA assistance.

Across Vermont, mobile homes then provided 7 percent of the state’s total housing stock. Eighty-seven percent of mobile-home residents owned their homes, and almost 85 percent were low- or very low-income. Irene damaged or destroyed more than twice the typical proportion of mobile homes in a region hit by a FEMA-grade storm — and the recovery required a complex, determined collaboration among a number of partners, including the Disaster Relief Fund and Pomerleau.

Unlike stick-built homes, flood-damaged mobile homes usually can’t be rebuilt. They must be removed and replaced. Yet the expected average cost of removing them, about $1,500, was beyond the means of many flood

Stepping up for Mobile-Home Survivors

“ survivors in the parks. At the same time, dauntingly complicated FEMA regulations made it difficult, if not impossible, for mobile homeowners who dismantled or destroyed their homes to qualify for more than $5,000 in FEMA’s Individual Assistance grants, whose normal maximum is $30,200.

To get 83 mobile homes removed at no cost to their residents, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, a contractor by

profession, worked with industry colleagues, the Vermont Community Foundation, the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, the Association of General Contractors of Vermont, and the VDRF. The project was made possible by $310,803 in funding contributed by the Community Foundation’s Mobile Home Project, Aubuchon Hardware, the proceeds from Phish’s

Homeowner Patty Goodell holds the key to her new trailer home in Weston’s Mobile Home Park in Berlin. Almost all of the 83 homes in the park were damaged or destroyed by floodwaters. Those destroyed were hauled away under a statewide project organized by Lt. Gov. Phil Scott.

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benefit concert, and major donations from businesses, family foundations, and others.

Through JoEllen Calderara, VDRF worked with Gov. Shumlin and the State Legislature to find a way to get more FEMA funding for mobile homeowners. “We kept pushing, and I kept testifying,” Calderara said. After much research, the Governor’s general counsel determined that Shumlin could declare personal property condemned — and that condemned mobile homes would qualify for maximum FEMA grants.

In April 2012, FEMA agreed to review the cases of 110 mobile homes that had received condemnation letters. That opened up a total of $1 million in new Individual Assistance grants for mobile-home residents. In the end, 525 Vermont residents of Irene-damaged mobile homes received some form of FEMA assistance.

And in March, Tony Pomerleau wrote a check that gave an enormous boost to the hard work Ver-monters had been doing for mobile-home recovery.

“That home is just as important”“Tony wanted to do something,” David Coates

said of the well-known Burlington real estate developer. “We spent a long time, the Governor, myself, and Neale Lunderville, talking to him. The Governor said, ‘Think big, Tony. Think big!’”

He did. In March, Pomerleau presented Coates and the VDRF with a $1 million check to create the Pomerleau Cornerstone Fund. It would provide grants to assist the recovery of individuals and families with storm-damaged mobile homes.

“Tony said he wanted to focus on the mobile-home owners because he knew they were the most vulnerable among the survivors,” Coates explained. “His goal was not just to give them money, but to make sure they could return to a home without

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new debt.”At a State House reception in his honor on

March 20, Pomerleau said he’d been moved to help by remembering the Great Flood of 1927, in which 84 Vermonters died and 10,000 were left homeless. His own family’s home was spared, but Pomerleau recalled his father walking the riverbank as the flood waters rose.

For every Irene survivor who lost a mobile home, he said at the reception, “that particular home for those particular people is just as important, to them, as my house was to me.”

Pomerleau’s donation enabled VDRF to increase to $25,000 its maximum allotment for approved mobile-home recovery cases, until the whole

Cornerstone Fund had been granted out. As with all VDRF cases, approved funding went to contractors and service providers involved in building or recovering mobile homes.

The Cornerstone Fund was parceled out speedily, in grants to 66 mobile home cases. Its average grant was $16,200, compared to an overall average VDRF grant of about $12,000.

“Mr. Pomerleau’s money went to the right area,” said Neale Lunderville. “Having a targeted fund like that was really important.”

“It was an incredible gesture,” agreed David Coates — “one that we as a state have come to expect from a man who has never lost sight of his roots, growing up poor in northern Vermont.”

In Berlin, Sandy Gaffney stands at her new mobile home in August 2012. She was one of the volunteer activists who spoke out and organized to bring resources and assistance to those whose mobile homes were damaged or destroyed.


Charlie Kireker said yes on the first phone call. “That was a complete violation of what I had promised my wife,” he said — “that I would not accept any new invitation to get involved

without talking to her and taking some time to think it over.

“But people needed help. So I jumped in.”Kireker became chair of the Development

Committee, the group dedicated to fundraising, and there may have been no other Vermonter better-suited for the task. He is co-founder and former managing director of Fresh Tracks Capital, a Middlebury venture-capital firm, now based in Shelburne, that has a special focus on emerging Vermont businesses.

Kireker had previously co-founded three other business-investment and downtown-revitalization firms, and like Coates he served on a number of Vermont boards, including VPR’s.

“He could tie us into the philanthropic bent that existed out there in the state,” noted fellow board member Doug Bishop. But, Bishop added, there was a big challenge: “How do you go about introducing an organization no one’s ever heard of, and ask people to make a five- or six-figure donation?”

Betsy Ide described a related challenge: “The storm hit a lot of Vermont, but it didn’t hit where the money is.” The most affluent parts of the state — Chittenden, Franklin, and Addison counties — were relatively unaffected. “So we had to do a lot of educating.”

What was required was a formal, ambitious,

5. “We Need to Raise This Money Now”

and successful capital fundraising campaign. A project like that, with a multimillion-dollar goal, is usually a complex, three- to five-year undertaking.

“But we said, ‘We need to raise this money now,’” Kireker said. “We have a whole pipeline of cases that are making their way through the system.”

With funding from the Vermont Community Foundation, the board engaged DeMont Associates, Portland, Maine-based fundraising consultants, to quickly produce a feasibility study. DeMont envisioned a traditional campaign structure, with a hierarchy of well-trained volunteers.

“We said, ‘We’re not going to do that,’” Coates recalled. “We just want to know how much we can raise, and then we’re going to raise it.’

“Oh, we simplified it! It was the most unconventional campaign anybody has ever seen.”

“We were so moved by that”Co-chairing the campaign that launched in late

November 2011 were Coates, Kireker, and Karen Nystrom Meyer, who had been executive vice president of the Vermont Medical Society and V.P. of federal, state, and community relations for the University of Vermont. Like Coates and Kireker, Meyer had served on a number of business and nonprofit boards in Vermont, and was widely known and highly regarded.

“The reality was that a lot of this money was going to be raised by five or six of us, just working our networks,” said Kireker. “We three had been involved with statewide stuff, with enough organizations and political efforts to know many of the potential donors.

“People give to a cause, yes — but they also give to people. And we had enough people on the board who were recognized and well-known. People felt that, ‘I know the cause is real, I know the need is real, and I trust the people who have asked me.’”

The campaign’s kickoff event featured the presentation of a $100,000 check from Burlington

real-estate developer Bobby Miller. The next night, recalled Betsy Ide, she joined Coates and other board members at a Vermont Chamber of Commerce dinner that honored Burlington real-estate developer Tony Pomerleau, who donated $1 million to the Fund to assist mobile-home owners (see pages 16-19).

“That night,” she said, “Bobby gave David a second check for $100,000, saying he and his wife had been really moved the night before.

“We were so moved by that. And of course, I immediately asked Bobby, ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’”

“People give to a cause,

yes — but they also

give to people. And we

had enough people on

the board who were

recognized and well-

known. People felt that,

‘I know the cause is real,

I know the need is real,

and I trust the people

who have asked me.’”


“Everybody came together”The response to the campaign was speedy, warm,

and strong. “As soon as there was something for the people

of Vermont to attach themselves to, so they could show their support for their neighbors, they latched right onto it,” said Doug Bishop. Many donors were reassured to know that 100 percent of all donations would go toward assisting the recovery of individual storm survivors. The Fund’s operating costs were all covered by other means, largely

through the Vermont Community Foundation.“We went to so many fundraisers — it was a real

team effort,” said David Coates. “Everybody came together. That’s what kept my energy going.”

“Another unsung hero was Michael Seaver, president of People’s Bank; he was treasurer of the campaign,” said Ide. “He was just great. He really put a lot of time into it.”

“What impressed me so much was just how everybody opened their hearts — and their pocketbooks,” Coates recalled. “We raised so much

in Chittenden County, and Chittenden County wasn’t even hit. But the money came from all over. We heard from a 95-year-old lady that had been hit by Hurricane Katrina, on the Gulf Coast. She said, ‘You sent money down to me when I was in need,’ and she sent $25 back up here. I mean, you pick up and read that kind of letter, and how are you going to feel?”

By mid-August, though, the Fund had raised just $3.6 million, including $490,000 from the sale of “I Am Vermont Strong” license plates (see separate article on page 15). At a press conference with Gov. Shumlin, Coates said, “I would just urge everyone to buy a license plate.”

Vermonters came through with a strong new flow of donations. By early 2013, the Fund had raised $6.8 million — and, looking at the number of unresolved cases, the board decided that amount of money was enough. It would cover the Irene cases that remained to be approved, while leaving a significant amount that would enable the Fund to respond to future disasters.

“We had several conversations with donors who were very pleased that the fund was going to be a permanent safety net, if you will,” Kireker said. In 2013, the flood did respond to new events. After flooding struck Vermont in the spring and summer of that year, the Allocations Committee granted $200,737 to 20 new cases.

In Waterbury, Lugene Pitman worked with the Central Vermont Community Action Council, now Capstone Community Action, to secure funding for repairs to her storm-damaged Union Street home. Pitman’s case became just the third recipient of a grant from the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.

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At Tuckerbox, a popular lunch spot in White River Junction, Anne Duncan Cooley remembers how it was here that people gathered, in the days after Irene, wanting to

help — with no idea how to begin. “There was just chaos. Nobody knew who was

supposed to take charge,” said the executive director of the Upper Valley Housing Coalition. “This became a meeting place. People began coming in saying, ‘Who needs help? Who’s doing what?’”

Outside, the devastation extended from the West Lebanon shopping plaza across the river, where some big stores would remain closed for months, putting hundreds of area residents out of work, way up into hill towns where no one had expected a flood.

“Tons of rain came down those gulleys and washed out people and roads, in hill towns and rural areas without a lot of resources,” she recalled. “Communications, radio and phones, were wiped out.”

Cooley became chair of the local response coalition that began coming together in the first weeks after the storm. Its vital first funding and support came from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and Granite United Way, which serves both sides of the Upper Connecticut River Valley.

Upper Valley Strong, as the long-term regional recovery group named itself, took on the task of coordinating recovery efforts from the valley up into Vermont hill towns like Stockbridge and Rochester. It was one of nine local or regional long-term recovery committees that assembled

“A Strong Web of Connectedness”How a Regional Committee Rose to the Task

themselves around the state. In the spokes-and-hub system for individual

recovery that Vermonters pieced together after Irene, each local and regional committee would eventually work with locally based case managers, and with the statewide Disaster Relief Fund, to develop applications for the grants that enabled individuals and families to finish repairing or rebuilding their homes and lives.

At the start, though, each group faced what seemed a herculean task.

“We didn’t have a structure to deal with all the generosity that was coming in. No bank account, fiscal agent, website,” Cooley said. “No structure for volunteers to take on cases. It was exhausting and frustrating and rewarding. You’d get up at four on a Saturday morning to get ahead of your email, and somebody would have emailed you at two.

“But it was creative! And you met the nicest people, which really helped.”

“Let’s get started”The first challenge for Upper Valley Strong was

to assign the right roles to all the organizations and volunteers that wanted to help. Many had already started pitching in — and a lot of lessons got learned. For example, if you hope that a disaster site can qualify for federal funding, don’t start cleaning it up before FEMA sees the damage.

The group formed committees, created a website, reached out to more funders. “We raised money to hire some people,” Cooley said. “You can’t expect people to volunteer for months and years and still

be effective.” A phone bank was set up, with volunteers

trained to talk and work with traumatized survivors. Case managers were hired through community-action agencies, with training by FEMA and UMCOR, the Methodist relief agency. But the work went beyond the case managers’ human-service expertise, into construction and finance; that expertise had to be brought in. Volunteer groups that were arriving from out of state, to help, needed to be housed and fed.

FEMA’s recovery model depended on county government and very large church congregations, neither of which Vermont has. So each local and regional committee developed its version of a working recovery system. They all coordinated with the case managers, to develop applications for individual-recovery grants that could be submitted to the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.

“VDRF said to us, ‘We need to have cases reviewed locally, then bring them to us,’” Cooley said. “We didn’t rubber-stamp stuff, either. We were responsible to the community for how the money was spent.”

Upper Valley Strong made sure its case-review panel was independent from the case managers. The panel included a local bank manager plus representatives from Granite United Way, The Upper Valley Haven housing shelter in Wilder, and the area field director from the state Agency of Human Services (AHS). Once a case came through the Upper Valley committee, it would be reviewed very speedily by VDRF.


“‘We could tell survivors, ‘We’ll let you know in a week,’” Cooley said. “And it worked! We could then call a survivor and say, ‘We got $20,000 to fix your house. Let’s get started.’

“VDRF was listening to us, they weren’t dictating to us,” she added. “That really made it work. Having a good allocations process was huge.”

“To hit the ground running next time”In the months after Irene, Upper Valley Strong

got together every week, then every other week. It continues to meet, now four times a year. Members represent area nonprofits, community action agencies, the United Way, and AHS. The group also includes coordinators of construction and volunteers.

“I think we’ve learned enough to hit the ground running the next time, if it happens again,” said Steve Geller, executive director of Southeastern Vermont Community Action.

One key lesson, he said, “is that we have to be nimble enough not to be stuck in inflexible geographic territories — turf. We have to be prepared to come together across our usual comfort zones and say, ‘Now we have a collection of organizations that reflects the needs. Now we can talk about what needs to be done.’”

“There was a strong web of connectedness among entities and service-delivery groups here in this community,” reflected Sara Kobylenski, executive director of The Haven. “Because we already had that trust, we could meet and address each new wave of the challenge, each phase of the recovery, in thoughtful ways.”

“One of the things we did right in Vermont was to have local people hired as case managers,” working with the community action agencies, said Lynne Boyle of AHS. “We need to coordinate them

better in the future.”Committee members would like to see a central

state fund set up, to support local and regional recovery work — one “that can be accessed immediately,” Kobylenski said.

When another flood struck communities on the

The steering committee of Upper Valley Strong, the long-term recovery committee for the Upper Valley region, from left in the front row: Lynn Boyle, field director for the Vermont Agency of Human Services; Steve Geller, executive director, Southeastern Vermont Community Action; and Sara Kobylenski, executive director, Upper Valley Haven. Standing, from left: Anne Goodrich, volunteer coordinator; Suzanne Stofflet, senior director of community impact for Granite United Way; Andrew Winter, executive director, Twin Pines Housing Trust; and Anne Duncan Cooley, committee chair and executive director of the Upper Valley Housing Coalition. Not shown is Chris Miller, construction coordinator.

New Hampshire side of the river in early summer, 2013, “We had a website. We had people who knew how to do it,” said Anne Cooley. “We had all these things in place that we had learned from Irene — and we were able to respond in 24 hours, rather than 24 days.”


In Castleton, an 85-year-old man needed $1,000 to have enough to replace a furnace and hot-water heater that Irene had damaged severely. In the Springfield area, a disabled veteran and her

husband needed $2,846 to replace a mold-infested basement wall. In Windham County, after a year of living on bottled and donated water, a couple needed $2,709 to have enough funds to replace their storm-destroyed well. And in Duxbury, a family of four whose house had been virtually gutted by the flooding needed $18,174 to replace their septic system, the last phase of work before they could have a habitable home.

These were just some of the 362 appeals for last-resort funds that the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund approved, to help fund the completion of home and household-system repairs, rebuilds, and/or relocations from damage caused by Irene or its aftermath. The allocations process began in January 2012 and continued for almost two years. In all, the fund disbursed $3,951,027 — not to homeowners, but to contractors and other providers of approved services.

“Once it started, [the funding requests] came fast and furious,” said Doug Bishop, the Red Cross official in Burlington who chaired the Allocations Committee.

At the outset, there was no template for this process. “We had to figure out what the mechanics of it were going to be, how to ensure fairness,” Bishop said. “Bill Elwell has a phrase: We were building the bridge as we were walking across it. We couldn’t wait. That would have delayed the

6. Allocations: The “Block-and-Tackle Work”

help that people needed.” The system they developed grew out of the

weekly phone call-ins that Elwell hosted in the aftermath of the disaster, with VOAD partners and volunteer case managers. Those volunteers worked with the long-term recovery committees that came together in nine regions of the state: Washington,

Bennington, Rutland, and Windham counties, the Mad River Valley, Northfield/Roxbury, Springfield/Chester/Ludlow, the Waterbury area, and the Windsor/Orange/Hartford area.

Those committees brought local and regional resources — such as volunteer agencies, community-based organizations, local government, and businesses — to bear on locating Vermonters whose homes had been damaged or destroyed, assessing their needs and engaging resources that could help.

“We coordinated our efforts with the local recovery groups,” said David Coates. “We didn’t come in as big brother. We came in as a partner, and they helped us develop our guidelines.”

“Nobody waited more than a week”FEMA’s $2.4 million Disaster Case Management

grant, awarded in early 2012, funded the hiring of 11 trained case managers. They began working out of three community action agencies, connecting with storm survivors through those agencies and the long-term recovery committees. Federal funding through community development block grants later extended the case managers’ stipends. And the weekly VOAD call-ins grew into biweekly sessions, each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for almost two years.

In those calls, the case managers presented appeals to the Allocations Committee — Bishop, JoEllen Calderara, and Laurie Hurdle — for the funding of so-far unmet needs.

“We had no case managers ourselves,” Bishop

In July 2012, Will Farnham rebuilds front steps in Waitsfield.

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said. “But we could not have done our work without case managers.”

“Once those folks were in place and the allocations began,” said Bill Elwell, “that began to be a lot of my time, connecting with them. It was done one on one. I would try to get them to a place where their case could work, even before the call with the Allocations Committee — making sure they had everything in place, and the story was clear.”

“Each case manager would be scheduled to call in at a certain time,” Bishop said. “They would have already submitted the information electronically, and we would hear from one to 12 cases in an afternoon. The conference calls would take the better part of two hours.

“You have to make sure the money is there when people need it — so we wrote checks every Friday. Nobody waited more than a week. No project was held up, no contractor had to wait.” As the cases came in, the Fund’s board, seeing the extent of the need, decided to increase its maximum allotment from $10,000 to $20,000.

“I just always said ‘yes’”Nor were the biweekly phone conferences just

about funding. The VDRF became a statewide resource and communications connector for the local and regional recovery groups, for the case managers, for the state’s Irene Recovery Office, and for the storm survivors.

“It was a conversation with the case managers, about how we were going to help the person advance their recovery,” said Bishop. “We wanted to be timely, we wanted to be available, we wanted people to see us as a good and valuable partner. Betsy Ide would often sit in on the calls, and she knew all the programs and resources. Whatever connections she didn’t have, she quickly made.”

“When people called me,” Ide said, “I just always said ‘yes’ — and then I would figure it out. We would bring the various organizations and efforts together. Bill Elwell’s pastoral background helped a lot. He counseled a lot of the case managers, the people on the ground.”

Calderara became the fund’s primary connector with individual needs around the state. “We had community meetings to bring partners to the table,” she said, “and I started having weekly phone calls with case managers, and with the chairs of long-term recovery committees. That way, we could all communicate with each other, build off each other. When one person had a good idea, everyone else stole it and used it.”

“She cared about these people so much,” Ide said of Calderara. “She was a volunteer! And we were so lucky that we had someone who had already built that expertise.”

The Allocations Committee also had much help from three non-VDRF members: Carmen Derby of the United Way of Windham County, Ann Cooper of the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont, and Rev. Deborah Estey of the Rutland United Methodist Church.

“Relationships allow that to happen”Early in the response to Irene, FEMA had

invited individuals affected by the storm to apply for its Individual Assistance grants. Over 7,200 such claims were registered, and more than 4,200 received grants. The average FEMA Individual Assistance grant was $5,500 — yet 681 Vermont homes had over $10,000 in damages.

Some communities, like Waterbury, were able to do local fundraising that helped close that gap in meeting individual needs. But other regions had fewer resources, and many Vermonters still had unmet needs even after case managers helped them

find every resource. That was where the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund came in, as the funder of last resort (although later in the process, community development block grants provided additional last-resort funding).

The Disaster Relief Fund had predicted that the average unmet need would be about $12,000. In the end, it was $10,894.

To keep its allocations process fair and ensure, to the greatest degree possible, that the needs met were legitimate and that funding was used as requested, the Allocations Committee set up criteria:

• Funds were provided for home-related items: building materials, furnaces, septic systems, foundation repairs, appliances, etc. All needs had to be verified and directly related to Irene damage.

• All applicants were means-tested, and had to demonstrate not just need but also personal participation in their own recovery plan, through financial and/or sweat-equity means.

• No funds were awarded to reimburse expenses already incurred.

• Awarded funds were provided to vendors or service providers, on behalf of survivors.

“This was the block-and-tackle work of getting recovery done — the actual mechanics of it,” said Neale Lunderville.

“The relationships we build are more important than the systems we build,” reflected Bill Elwell. “That I think is at the heart of it. Whether we were talking to VOAD partners or case managers or donors, we were focused on the needs of people, and how do we get to yes. How can we make this work? I don’t think it’s really systems that allow that to happen; relationships allow that to happen. I think that’s number one.”


One of the most effective choices Vermonters made after Irene was the move by community action agencies in storm-hit areas to take on the hiring and employment

of case managers, using federal funds from FEMA and, later, from community-development block grants. Eleven case managers — who were, critically, nearly all drawn from and familiar with the areas they would serve — worked through community action agencies to guide the work and assemble the funding that enabled individuals and families to repair or rebuild homes, or to buy new places. In many cases, the final piece of each funding puzzle was a grant from the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.

In hard-hit Windham County about five months after Irene, Elizabeth McEwen was looking for a more challenging position than the administration job she held in Brattleboro. She spotted a newspaper ad placed by Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) for disaster-recovery case managers.

“I saw it and said, ‘I really want to do that!’” With training provided by the Methodist relief agency UMCOR and by FEMA, that February she began, like the other case managers, to put in long days, weeks, and months.

McEwen covered the western half of her county. “I got to know the Rte. 100 corridor, from Whitingham to Jamaica, really really well,” she said.

“There were enormous workloads, mostly

From Household to HouseholdIn Windham County, a Case Manager Assembled Solutions

because of the unknown. How many of the people who originally reported damage, still had damage? How many were going to have unmet needs after FEMA fixed them up? How many would not qualify for FEMA assistance?

“The only way to do it was household to household. You had to talk to them. At the beginning, it was a whole lot of phone work — and then, for each case that was still reporting unmet

needs, you had to go see them.” The flood damage, she learned, “could have been

anywhere.” Down in the valleys and up in the hills, “each case was a puzzle. I found it challenging and exciting, to put a case all together and get it funded.”

In her region, modest initial grants often came from money raised by the Southeastern Vermont Irene Long-Term Recovery Committee. But when McEwen, needing additional funds to close cases, first approached the statewide Fund, she wasn’t sure what to expect.

“We didn’t know these people,” she recalled. “We were going to have to talk to them on the phone — and there was so much riding on this. But we very quickly built trust, and real relationships. I found them to be total colleagues in problem-solving.”

In all, she closed 47 cases that included grants from the Fund.

“Statewide, all the case managers really bonded,” said McEwen, who in mid-2014 was still employed by SEVCA, still working to close her last cases of long-term recovery. “The reason I’m here is the dedication of SEVCA to the survivors of the flood. And I learned a tremendous amount from my clients. I learned about loss, and how no one can really understand it but the person who is going through it.

“For me, that was a phenomenal life lesson,” she concluded. “I was just really privileged to work with all these people.”Windham County case manager Elizabeth McEwen.


Where the Brissette family’s home once stood is now a narrow, triangular patch of grass, about 20 feet

above where Beaver Brook meets the Deerfield River, close to the main crossroads in Wilmington. If you stand on that grass and look straight into the trees that rise from the steep-falling riverbank, you’ll see a wooden chair. About 25 feet above the water, it’s lodged in a tree.

That chair, swept by floodwaters out of a local pub, is the only reminder still visible here from August 28, 2011. “That shows you how high the water actually came,” Tim Brissette said.

Eight months after the storm waters receded, the Brissettes were living in the second of what would be three successive rental places — and they were feeling stuck, frustrated by the complexity of securing the funds they needed to get into a permanent home. Then they connected with case manager Elizabeth McEwen of Southeastern Vermont Community Action (see preceding page), and began a long, step-by-step collaboration.

“Every Monday at 6 p.m. for months, Elizabeth would come over when Tim got out of work, and she would sit down with us,” Sherry Brissette said. “She would say, ‘Okay — what are we going to

“We Have a House. We Survived”In Wilmington, One Family’s Path to Recovery

work on this week?’“She was our savior. She was like

a rock.” In October 2013, more than two

years of transition ended. The Bris-settes moved into a house they’d bought a little ways up Rte. 9, a good elevation above the road and the river beside it. Their new place has apple trees and blueberry bushes in the back yard, and is about the same size as their former home. With help from their case manager, they put its purchase together with grants from Rotary International and the South-eastern Vermont Irene Long-Term Recovery Committee. The final piece was a near-maximum award from the Vermont Disaster Recovery Fund.

Using funds from FEMA, the Brissettes were able to install a

high-efficiency furnace and new windows in their new home, and to upgrade its electrical system. Ownership of their old property was transferred to the Town of Wilmington, which removed the wrecked house and has committed itself to keeping the lot a green, public space.

“Elizabeth was great on finding grants and helping us,” Tim Brissette said. “There are certain things we lost that she couldn’t help us with.”

“But we have a house,” his wife said. “We survived.”

Sherry Brissette of Wilmington, outside the home that VDRF funds helped them to buy, replacing the one the storm destroyed.

The chair that Irene left suspended in a tree, above the Deerfield River next to the lot that once held Tim and Sherry Brissette’s home.


7. “The Best of Vermont” — Summing Up & Looking Ahead

Irene was the sixth costliest storm in United States history. From the Caribbean to Canada, its overall toll was at least 67 deaths and an estimated $15.8 billion in damage. The damage

in Vermont added up to $733 million, an amount that equals almost two-thirds of the state’s annual General Fund budget.

But this state is a community. And Vermont came back.

By spring of 2013, fundraising for the Disaster Relief Fund was all but complete. The allocations process was running smoothly, and it was clear that the money Vermonters and others had contributed would be enough to meet the remaining individual needs. The Fund continued to work closely with all of the local and regional long-term recovery committees, as it did with the state Irene Recovery Office and its three successive directors, Neale Lunderville, Sue Minter, and David Rapaport.

On Memorial Day weekend, Betsy Ide departed as the Fund’s executive director. “We’d really accomplished something. There wasn’t anything for me to triage any more,” she said. She is now chief of staff at Green Mountain Power.

The Fund remains in place, with resources and a working structure that is prepared to aid in Vermonters’ recovery from the next disaster. And in a time when very severe weather events are growing more common, often with devastating outcomes, Vermont’s response is being held up as a model from which other states and regions can learn.

“Everybody points to us, and thinks we

got it right,” said Bob Costantino, emergency management coordinator for the state Agency of Human Services.

“Vermont was one of the early adopters of the statewide long-term recovery group,” agreed John Stewart, FEMA’s voluntary-agency liaison for the Northeast region. “They did that very well, and it’s certainly a best practice that we’re talking about. People are talking about Vermont as a model.”

“We’ve developed a template”Stewart called three aspects of Vermont’s

response especially noteworthy: that its long-term recovery was led by a statewide group, that it mustered a statewide fund, and that private-sector leadership was represented on the group’s board.

“The statewide long-term recovery group can set the bar for all the local groups, and can act as a role model,” Stewart said. “It can ensure a certain amount of quality and uniformity.”

“We’ve developed a template for the local long-term recovery committees — and we worked with those communities in doing that,” noted David Coates, who chaired the Disaster Relief Fund (which is incorporated as the Vermont Long-Term Recovery Group).

“We sit at the table with them,” agreed Doug Bishop, vice chair of the Fund. “If they need a lawyer, we have lawyers that are available; if they need an accountant, we have an accountant available, to help them through the process. We make it work pretty easily. So much of the work is aided by the strength of the partnerships you can form.”

“This is a state that prides itself on taking care of everyone,” said Neale Lunderville, who joined the Fund’s board after leaving the state recovery office. “So we built an effort — not entirely from scratch, because FEMA played a big part in providing a first level of individual assistance. But on top of that, we built a very high-touch, very customized solution for each individual family that didn’t always give them everything they needed, but gave them as much as we could really give.

“That’s part of the unique nature of what Vermont did,” he added. “And equal credit goes to the local and regional long-term recovery committees. That’s where the lion’s share of the case-management work happened.”

“I would do it again”Among the key lessons learned that emerge from

Vermont’s experience is the necessity of ensuring

This cake was served at Mendon’s Irene Recovery Celebration.

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that the leadership of the Disaster Relief Fund, its long-term recovery group, be diverse and strictly non-political.

“It was really important for it not to be all Democrats or all Republicans, or all big-money people and no community-level people,” said Lunderville. “You knew the board was going to be the way it was when David Coates was appointed chair. The board’s composition was made in David’s reflection.”

“I think one reason why it became so successful was that we understood what was happening out there,” Coates observed. “We didn’t have a political organization, and it was not about us. It was about the people who were injured, the victims.”

“One of the lessons of recovery work here is that it is incredibly important that you keep your efforts as simple as possible,” said Chris Graff, who led the Fund’s communications work — “and always think about what a survivor would think if you told them this. Never lose sight of the perspective of the survivor. It’s really important that you see things through their eyes.”

“This isn’t going to be a cookie-cutter program for somebody else, because people are different, states are different,” said Bill Elwell, the minister who was the Fund’s director of allocations. “The greatest, reinforced lesson is to be flexible, because the needs are always emerging. Developing plans to meet those needs that are flexible enough to change, and to move with the flow when it’s happening, has been the greatest lesson.

“In talking to other states as they have disasters, and sharing the lessons we’ve learned,” he added, “I think one of the most important things to remember is that you don’t have to do it alone — that people can work together, and overcome the challenges. And don’t be afraid to ask for help, ask for advice. Say what worked for you, listen to what worked for

others, and adapt that to your own area.”In January 2014, Chris Graff took over from

David Coates as chair of the Fund. “Vermont suffered a body blow with Tropical

Storm Irene in 2011,” Graff said in a FEMA video on the work of the Disaster Relief Fund and the long-term recovery committees around the state. “I guess my hope for the long-term recovery process is that two or three years down the road, people look back and know that they suffered something of historic proportions — but they think of it as

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history, not as something that is still going on ... that the people who were the survivors have moved on with their lives.”

“I would do it again,” said JoEllen Calderara, the Fund board member who worked beyond exhaustion, ensuring that storm survivors got the help they needed. “It was successful. And we needed it.”

“This brought out the best of Vermont — it brought back our sense of community,” she reflected. “I think that’s here forever.”

At Mendon’s Irene Recovery Celebration, one year after the storm, are town clerks Helen Lawrence (left), Gail Buck, and Ann Singiser.


Ann Marie Bolton took the pay she’d saved from her tour in Iraq, with the 86th Field Artillery, and bought a mobile home in Berlin for herself and her daughter

Kristen. On the Sunday when Irene hit, she was a state employee moonlighting as the manager of an apartment complex. She was at that complex, unclogging a drain, when her brother Luis Martinez called to say that water at their mobile-home park was running really high.

By the time Ann Marie got there, firefighters were rescuing people with a bucket loader. She spotted Luis — he was struggling through chest-high flowing water, pulling Kristen and others to safety on a broken-free slab of pink foam insulation.

“It was like Noah’s ark,” she recalled. “It had my daughter on it, two ladies, and a cat.”

Her home was destroyed. Mobile homes with severe water damage commonly can’t be salvaged; the water had risen over five feet high in hers. She and her family lost just about everything but the clothes they wore.

“I’m a single mom, and all the money I had, I had put into my house. It was just heartbreaking to see everything you’d worked for, your whole life, just covered in muck.” She had no flood insurance. Her home hadn’t been in a flood zone.

Ann Marie became a vocal, effective advocate for the dozens of Weston’s Park residents who lost their homes, helping to organize them and bring in volunteers and relief supplies. But she and Kristen were homeless, staying with friends.

From a Destroyed Mobile Home To a New Life in Websterville

Kristen started eighth grade, and her mom began looking on the foreclosure market.

“It was unfortunate that I had to profit from someone else’s misfortune — but I did not have anything,” Ann Marie said of that approach. “I decided that instead of running away, I was going to stand up to this.”

Ann Marie received some grant money from FEMA, but it wasn’t nearly enough to buy a home. Then she connected with JoEllen Calderera, who advocated for mobile homeowners, coordinated with case managers, and did case-management work for the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund.

In Websterville, Anne Marie Bolton and her daughter Kristen.

The two put together a proposal. VDRF’s Allocations Committee awarded Ann Marie its maximum grant. On Mother’s Day, 2012, her bid to purchase a three-bedroom frame house in Websterville was accepted.

The home needed a lot of work, and some money that remained from her FEMA grant made that possible. After months of labor, Ann Marie and her family had their first meal in their new home on Thanksgiving Day.

“This would not have been possible without the VDRF,” she summed up. “Without them, it was just a pipe dream.”

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One year after Irene, a roadside display in East Granville remembers.

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In Moretown, nearly a year after Irene, volunteers Tony Lamb, left, and Ted Marcy work on restoring a storm-damaged home to live-in condition. Through the summer of 2012, volunteers continued to help get residents back in their homes, or into new homes.

Thanks to National Life Group for underwriting this report.

The Board of Directors of the Vermont Long-Term Disaster Recovery Group. Front row, from left: Neale Lunderville, David Coates, Betsy Ide, MaryEllen Mendl. Back row: Chris Graff, Bill Elwell, Doug Bishop, JoEllen Calderara, Laurie Hurdle, Charlie Kireker. Missing: State Rep. Ann Manwaring.

Vermont Disaster Relief FundPO Box 843

Montpelier, Vermont 05601

www.VermontDisasterRecovery.com

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