Damage from Irene

My friend Don's house. I'm putting him up in my condo for a while. I'm driving in with an SUV-load of stuff early tomorrow morning. The only road in is Route 4 from Woodstock and it's only open to the public from 6:30am to 7:30am. From 8am to 9am, they reverse direction.

6092469847_7c5563d1bf_b.jpg
 
There are some new slides in the Daks:

http://adkbcski.com/2011/08/31/a-birds-eye-view-after-irene/

Many of the covered bridges in VT are either heavily damaged or, in at least 3 cases, simply gone:

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/...m-Irene?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyO18one8fU

Parking at the Pickle Barrel in Killington is a bit more difficult:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIm8IfEKtk&feature=related


General mayhem from around the state:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1tCdtoMzsU&NR=1
 
These images kind of capture the magnitude of the problem.

http://mansfieldheliflight.com/flood/

I was in Killington for 24 hours to open up my condo for a friend who lost his house in the flood. Most of the housing in Killington is nowhere near the creek and river beds that flooded so the impact to the town is minimal other than the inconvenience of being stranded there with only very limited windows to enter or exit the town. You can now come and go at dawn & dusk and aren't allowed to drive on Route 4 towards Woodstock during road crew work hours. It will probably be at least a month before passenger cars can get from Killington to Rutland.

If you venture east into Bridgewater or north or south on Route 100, it's a totally different story. Houses washed away. Roads and bridges are destroyed. There are many people who are completely wiped out. In Bridgewater, only two of the houses that flooded had flood insurance. It's not an affluent town and most people can't afford it. All the rich people building oceanfront trophy homes have caused the insurance to be priced out of the reach of most Vermonters. The same is true in towns like Pittsfield, Stockbridge, Plymouth, and Rochester.
 
Geoff":juukihuq said:
There are many people who are completely wiped out. In Bridgewater, only two of the houses that flooded had flood insurance. It's not an affluent town and most people can't afford it. All the rich people building oceanfront trophy homes have caused the insurance to be priced out of the reach of most Vermonters.
I wonder what level of assistance FEMA gives out to people without flood insurance? Based on this, it can't be much.
http://www.fema.gov/assistance/process/ ... tance.shtm
 
jamesdeluxe":1fe212qo said:
I wonder what level of assistance FEMA gives out to people without flood insurance? Based on this, it can't be much.
http://www.fema.gov/assistance/process/ ... tance.shtm

I was hearing about $30,400 grants. ...as you say, not much if your house just washed away. For moderate damage, which is probably most people in Vermont, it should help. I have friends who had a flooded basement with 6 feet of water in it, debris from the river (including pieces of houses), and a fair amount of erosion and silt deposit on their land. They don't make a heck of a lot of money. An electrician already came in to replace all the breakers in the panel. Their LP tank vanished and they're going to need a new furnace. They're going to have to shovel 3 feet of silt out of their basement. A $30K grant is the difference between serious hardship and what will hopefully just be a major PITA inconvenience.
 
jamesdeluxe":223k772a said:
I wonder what level of assistance FEMA gives out to people without flood insurance?
Flood insurance is a good idea for any homeowner, since there's a significant difference between what most people consider a flood and how an insurance company defines flood. Most homeowner policies consider a flood to be the entrance of any outside water into a home, and most policies do not cover that occurrence, hence the need for flood insurance. The key word is "any".

If your hot water tank ruptures and floods your basement, that's covered under your homeowner's policy. If your unattended garden hose ruptures, fills a window well which breaks the glass and then proceeds to flood your basement, that is now considered a flood and is not covered unless you have flood insurance. This recently happened in a nearby town here in the SLC Valley, when a homeowner's sprinkler system failed and flooded their neighbor's basement. The loss was estimated at $40K, which was not covered under their policy.
 
Marc_C":3c1ekmcp said:
Most homeowner policies consider a flood to be the entrance of any outside water into a home, and most policies do not cover that occurrence, hence the need for flood insurance. The key word is "any". If your hot water tank ruptures and floods your basement, that's covered under your homeowner's policy. If your unattended garden hose ruptures, fills a window well which breaks the glass and then proceeds to flood your basement, that is now considered a flood and is not covered unless you have flood insurance.
Wow, count me as one of the uninformed. Thanks for the heads-up.
 
Marc_C":2qowbcpa said:
jamesdeluxe":2qowbcpa said:
I wonder what level of assistance FEMA gives out to people without flood insurance?
Flood insurance is a good idea for any homeowner, since there's a significant difference between what most people consider a flood and how an insurance company defines flood. Most homeowner policies consider a flood to be the entrance of any outside water into a home, and most policies do not cover that occurrence, hence the need for flood insurance. The key word is "any".

If your hot water tank ruptures and floods your basement, that's covered under your homeowner's policy. If your unattended garden hose ruptures, fills a window well which breaks the glass and then proceeds to flood your basement, that is now considered a flood and is not covered unless you have flood insurance. This recently happened in a nearby town here in the SLC Valley, when a homeowner's sprinkler system failed and flooded their neighbor's basement. The loss was estimated at $40K, which was not covered under their policy.

The real 'fun' ones with the insurance companies are arguments about whether water flooded a home, then it was destroyed by wind; or whether the wind ripped the house open which then allowed water intrusion. A common fight with/by homeowners in Hurricane damaged areas for example. The flood insurance to protect from the highly unlikely occurrence of your neighbors sprinkler is debatable, mostly depending on the price of the policy. If the policy is super cheap then grab it for the extra protection, but if it is even remotely expensive and I'm no where near a flood area of any type, I'd personally would 'self insure' for such an unlikely occurrence.
 
Now I'm curious to see how much flood policies cost and how much they vary according to where you live. What's incredible is how many people in places like heavily damaged Prattsville, NY in the Catskills -- which, according to locals, has flooded something like 17 times in the past few decades -- decide to forgo flood insurance.

Someone posted in a Snowjournal thread that you can't get a mortgage there without it, but back in the old days, it wasn't required, so people with limited means just rolled the dice?
 
Marc_C's sprinkler scenario is *very* common...trust me...

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
 
jamesdeluxe":1ckpv5uq said:
Go figure: the high desert as a booming market for flood insurance.
In our case, it's rolled into something all inclusive called Natural Disaster Protection - floods, earthquakes, wind/tornado, etc.

Remember, flood is any kind of outside water - rain via a broken window, city water-main break, et al.
 
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