Traffic flows across a temporary bridge after the original was washed away in this summer’s flooding on Mill Street in Plainfield on Monday, September 23, 2024. The floodwaters also swept away several apartments in the building on the right. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Dr. Opeyemi Parham lived in a 17-foot-diameter yurt along the Winooski River in the weeks before the July 2023 flooding. Walking by a dammed up section of the river each day, she would think, “‘I feel so bad for you.’”
Little did she know that the river was saying back, “‘don’t worry, I can take this girdle off,’” she said.
The floods ripped the yurt out of its holdings and floated it 30 feet downriver. Parham couldn’t even get to it for two weeks. When she did, she found that it had filled with an inch of water and was full of dust she feared was toxic. “I swept, and I swept, and I swept” for three days straight, she said.
Parham, a physician and a community activist known to many as Dr. O, told this story to a crowd of people at an open mic event at the Plainfield farmers market earlier in September. She said she hoped the anecdote would bring hope, and a dose of humor, to the many people now living through their own story of struggle.
Because while Plainfield did flood in July 2023, it was the July 2024 floods that knocked the town off its feet. The swelling water tore through Plainfield’s tiny downtown, flooding homes and damaging Brook Road, one of its main arteries. One apartment building, nicknamed the Heartbreak Hotel, was completely swept away.
Plainfield’s emergency manager, Michael Cerulli Billingsley, said six or seven people were displaced from their homes by the floods last year. This year, it’s more like 40.
Only about a dozen of those people are still looking for housing, he said, but the remainder have had to scatter to towns as distant as Montpelier and Danville in order to find a place to live.
Since the Federal Emergency Management Authority approved a disaster declaration for the flood in August, 62 households in Plainfield have applied to the Individual and Household Aid program, FEMA data shows.
That’s the seventh-highest in the state, even though Plainfield has just 430 full-time residents. The agency has given out $312,000 to those applicants, an amount which could rise in the coming months as more applications are approved. The deadline for seeking assistance related to the July 9-11 storm is Oct. 21.
A dog accompanies a person as they cross Main Street in Plainfield on Monday, September 23, 2024. Donated goods for flood relief are seen on the wall of the Grace United Methodist Church on the left. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Rae Carter, a local business owner and co-manager of the farmers market, described the situation as “an immediate grief of intensity, then the drip of pressure to make ends meet.” She said the biggest issue for many was Plainfield’s limited and aging housing stock.
Even those who have homes that remain habitable are struggling with repairs. Carter said several of her friends have developed health issues, likely from the mold growing in their homes after the flood.
Residents have expressed concern and frustration around how slowly federal aid has come into the community, Carter said. President Joseph Biden approved the federal disaster declaration for the July 2024 floods on August 20, compared to July 14 for the 2023 floods.
Plainfield is also a lower-income community compared to Montpelier, which received an outpouring of attention and support after the 2023 floods, Carter said. “There’s this immediate issue, and then everyone scrambles to try to meet it, but people have been having their needs not met for so long,” she said.
Yet residents described reason for hope and resilience even in the midst of their grief. The day after the farmers market, Plainfield hosted its annual Old Home Days, a community-wide event with a parade, street fair and barbecue.
Many residents saw the annual celebration as a way of marking the town’s progress since the flood. The event’s tagline this year was, “when the waters rise, so do we!”
Carter, who sells medicinal herbs from the farm she calls Grandmother Cherry Sanctuary, led a water healing ceremony during Old Home Days with songs and blessings. She said as a pagan, she feels a personal relationship with the elements, including the water that has caused her so much grief.
“We can all see how pained the water is,” she said. “She’s not supposed to be flowing like this.”
A plan to replace lost housing
Plainfield’s small downtown sits just off of Route 2 along the Winooski River. From its center at the corner of Main and Mill Streets, there appears to be very little damage in the strip of buildings visible, which house a pizza place and the town offices.
But walk or drive down Mill Street to Brook Road, and the damage becomes quickly apparent. The flood gouged large holes in the banks of the Great Brook and took chunks out of the road, part of which is still closed to traffic. Outside of downtown, the banks of the Winooski River are washed out, full of debris and rocks hastily placed to prevent further erosion.
The damage extended to Route 2 itself, which has been down to one travel lane for weeks to repair a bridge between East Montpelier and Plainfield. Another section of the state road is currently closed at least through the end of the month to shore up the riverbank, Seven Days reported, leading to concerns from local businesses about the loss of customers.
But the biggest challenge for recovery that residents brought up in early September on the eve of Old Home Days was housing. Cerulli Billingsley said 21 houses were rendered uninhabitable due to the flooding, between 5 to 10% of the town’s housing stock.
“There’s houses over on Brook Road that are unlivable, and you can’t barely get through the front door because the silt is still piled up against it and the back of the building’s been torn off,” he said.
The Plainfield Town Hall and Opera House seen on Monday, September 23, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Flood damage has exacerbated a housing crisis that Plainfield has struggled with alongside the rest of the state since the Covid pandemic.
“I don’t think we’re special,” Arion Thiboumery said. “This is an issue all over.”
The housing crisis was at the top of Thiboumery’s mind when he purchased the Heartbreak Hotel in January 2021. Thiboumery works in renewable energy, but as a longtime Plainfield resident, he hoped to keep the apartment building an affordable place to live after the previous owner retired.
Then he got a call on the night of the flooding. “‘It’s gone,’” a resident told him.
“You’re just stunned. You’re just like, here’s a building where the oldest parts of the building (have) been there 140 years, and it’s just gone, like nothing,” he said.
All of the residents were able to evacuate just before the building was swept away. But several pets, and almost everything the residents owned, were lost in the flood, he said. That includes priceless family photos and personal documents like Social Security cards.
“It’s not like other flooding where it’s like, ‘okay, I went in and I got my clothes, and I dried off my old family photographs, and they’re wet, but they’re salvaged,’” he said. “It’s wiped off the face of the earth, buried under feet and feet of mud somewhere.”
Out of this tragedy, Thiboumery has developed an even deeper passion for strengthening the community. He has become one of the leaders of an initiative to build new housing that would replace the lost housing stock in a spot well away from the flood zone.
He has a specific property in mind — one 20-acre lot owned by the town clerk, Bram Towbin, and his wife Erica Da Costa. It sits along the upper edges of Main Street, about 60 feet higher than the rest of the village. If that area floods, “everybody’s building boats at their houses at that point,” he said.
Da Costa said via email that the couple had looked into developing the property over the years, but the cost and regulatory hurdles stalled the project. The flooding and Thiboumery’s help has given new life to the idea.
Thiboumery suggested to Da Costa that instead of bringing in a private developer from elsewhere, the town itself could buy the land and subdivide it, then sell the lots to locals at an affordable price.
“The nascent plan is that the town would not end up losing one penny — and might actually make money — and that this beautiful piece of land would go to people who need it most: our own town residents,” Da Costa wrote.
Da Costa said the project is still in the very early stages. There are hurdles, among them potential conflict-of-interest issues with Towbin’s role as town clerk. But she’s happy that there’s now momentum behind the project.
Plainfield is a special place, she said, and “we feel happy about that and hope to contribute to the ability for people to live here,” she wrote.
How “hippies” help each other
Jay Voorhees had an unusual start to his tenure as pastor of the Grace United Methodist Church in Plainfield. His first sermon there was on July 7, 2024, only days before the flooding began.
The church, at the heart of downtown, became a hub for distributing supplies and coordinating volunteers. “It was a no-brainer to kind of open up the church and say, ‘Here it is, community. Use it as you need it,’” he said.
Voorhees also got a grant from the New England branch of the church to give out donations of $1,000 to $1,500 for residents to cover moving expenses and buy furniture.
“People are really generous about bringing stuff, but oftentimes it’s not the stuff that people really want or need,” he said. “And so the ability to give cash, to be able to say, ‘hey, go buy the furniture that you need, that you’re going to use,’ is really important.”
A mailbox with a goose leading other birds stands on Mill Street in Plainfield on Monday, September 23, 2024. The area was hit hard during this summer’s floods. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Vorhees’ role in flood recovery has given him a crash course in Plainfield’s unique qualities. Several people warned him when he started his job that the town was “a bunch of hippies” — but that’s why he loves it, he said.
“In some ways (that’s) really contributed to the community coming together and trying to work together,” he said.
Plainfield’s association with the counterculture stems from Goddard College, a small liberal arts college that emphasized non-traditional learning methods. In the 1960s and 1970s, it became a hub of left-wing activism and progressive teaching theories. Among its alums are playwright David Mamet, poet Louise Glûck and members of band Phish.
Goddard College wound down its residential program over the past few years, then announced in April it would shut down for good this year. But alums and former staff members remain in the area and have influenced Plainfield’s culture. The Greatwood Project, a community group founded by alums, bought the Goddard campus property in August.
To Voorhees, the Methodist pastor, that mentality became apparent the morning after the flood. When he arrived at the church, “there were already a boatload of people here in their muck boots ready to start digging folks out,” he said.
“The flood is an absolute tragedy, and I wish it had not happened and caused the pain that it did. But as a person of faith, I often see how sometimes you can find redemption even in the midst of that,” Voorhees said.
Better than goats
Before his time as emergency manager, Cerulli Billingsley owned a music studio, made documentaries and ran a Buddhist center. But what he misses most is the herd of six goats he raised in a neighbor’s pasture.
“I want to get back to goats. I would prefer that to doing emergency management,” he joked.
Cerulli Billingsley himself worked for 28 days straight after the floods. The day-to-day needs have ebbed since then, but he’s still looking forward to his retirement at the next Town Meeting Day.
Cerulli Billingsley has lived in Plainfield since the 1970s. He said there was a lot of “volunteerism” then, but the Covid pandemic caused people to retreat into themselves. The 2024 flooding event has “brought everybody out,” he said. Volunteers shoveled out muck, did paperwork and cooked three free meals each day for weeks after the flood.
U.S. Route 2 east of Plainfield is closed for repairs to damage caused by this summer’s flooding. Seen on Monday, September 23, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
A fundraising effort through the Plainfield Area Community Trust and Capstone Community Action has raised more than $40,000 to fund housing needs for flood victims, he said. GoFundMe web pages for specific people and families have raised thousands more.
Some of the most dedicated volunteers have been those who were themselves affected by the flood. One resident whose carpentry workshop was completely destroyed told Cerulli Billingsley, “if you got the tools, I’ll help you do the work,” he said.
“Anytime I ask for help, I get it,” he said. “It just feels fabulous. It feels like our future here is actually strengthened.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Plainfield community leans into humor and tradition during flood recovery.