UVM Responds to Record Flooding

VERMONT | In the course of two days at the beginning of the second week of July, Vermont and other parts of the northeastern U.S. received more total rain than usually falls over two summer months. Coming on the heels of other recent rains that saturated much of the ground, this precipitation went where gravity directed: right into streams, creeks, and rivers. When those waterways quickly reached their capacity, floodwaters spread out across lowlying farmland, residential neighborhoods, and commercial and downtown areas of cities and towns. Many culverts were no match for the flow, and roadways and bridges across the state were washed out. Vermonters awakened in the early morning hours of July 11 to find themselves in a changed state, challenged by the effects of the second “hundred-year storm” to hit the region in the last 12 years.

Many UVM faculty, staff, and students were directly impacted by the flooding, and many others came forward to help. Abra Levin ’24, a global studies and environmental studies double major, was in the middle of a summer internship with New Farms for New Americans (NFNA) in Burlington’s low-lying Intervale when it became clear that massive rainstorms were on the way. She quickly shifted from general maintenance and youth outreach to helping harvest what crops could be saved and then, post-flooding, helping the farmers clean up while also running the NFNA social media accounts, where she was able to interact with people looking for help or willing to donate time and effort to the cleanup. “It’s devastating to see the heavy burdens caused by the flooding, but thanks to so much support from individuals and external organizations, there seems to be hope rising within this community,” she said.

Across the campus, led by UVM’s Division of Safety and Compliance, about 400 volunteers came forward to help throughout the state. This included teams deployed to cleanup efforts in the especially hard-hit town of Barre. UVM staff were also part of Task Force 1, the state Urban/ Swift Water Rescue Team, and others assisted the state Division of Fire Safety with inspections of buildings. On campus, a community flood response drive that was expected to fill one van with potable water and other items wound up filling three and getting those supplies out where they were most needed within three days of the flooding.

Even as dawn broke on the morning of July 11, the Unoccupied Aircraft Systems (UAS) team members of the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources’ Spatial Analysis Lab (SAL) had already been up for hours. A UAS –better known by most as a drone– provides an aerial perspective that would prove crucial to the response and recovery efforts.

It is a privilege to be able to help our home state during a time of need.

The SAL’s UAS team logged 15-hour days recording conditions in areas from Cambridge and Jeffersonville on the Lamoille River, to Richmond, Waterbury, and Berlin in the Winooski watershed. “We realized that we had a limited time to acquire data near peak flood levels, so we knew we had to move quickly,” said Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, director of the SAL. A survey team also covered the flooded

Otter Creak near Middlebury and was called in to assess damage from a landslide in Ripton, one of the largest of nearly 50 landslides across Vermont that were triggered by the initial storm and further rainfall in the week afterward. Work in Barre included recording damage to mobile home parks that may help affected residents receive aid. Back on campus, teams of analysts worked behind the scenes to process and disseminate the data to local, state, and federal agencies via web apps. Estimates are that the release of assistance funds crucial for individuals to recover were sped up by weeks because of the SAL’s work. The SAL was by far the largest supplier of the accurate, mapping-grade imagery that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could use for work that would ultimately provide recovery funds to hard-hit Vermonters.

“It is a privilege to be able to help our home state during a time of need,” said team member Lauren Cresanti, who received her environmental science degree from UVM this past May.