Story of the VT Disaster Relief Fund

by theVermont Long-Term Disaster Recovery Group
“
We’reGoing
toGetItDone”
TheVermont Disaster Relief Fund
andVermont’s Response to
Tropical Storm Irene

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

“We’re Going to Get It Done” | 1
VermontLong-Term
DisasterRecoveryGroup
BoardofDirectors
Chris Graff
Montpelier, Chair
Doug Bishop
Colchester
JoEllen Calderara
Barre
David Coates
Colchester (Chair, 2011-13)
Bill Elwell
Bristol
Laurie Hurdle
Washington
Betsy Ide
Winooski
Charlie Kireker
Weybridge
Neale Lunderville
South Burlington
Rep. Ann Manwaring
Wilmington
MaryEllen Mendl
Colchester
FromtheChairs
T
he 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.

2 | “We’re Going to Get It Done”
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 OurWay”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
“Look What People Can Do”: The “I Am Vermont Strong” Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4. Communications:“We Had to KeepThis Front and Center”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Stepping up for Mobile-Home Survivors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5. “We Need to RaiseThis 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 ofVermont”— 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.
“Wewerejustinshock”
On Saturday, Tropical Storm Irene
made landfall in North Carolina’s Outer
I
n 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 PreludeandtheStorm
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.
IreneinVermont:TheImpacts
Deaths. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Municipalities affected. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Communities temporarily cut off. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Homes damaged. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,500+
Homes with over $10,000 in damage . . . . . . . . . . . . 681
Mobile homes damaged or destroyed. . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
Households displaced, temporarily or permanently . . . . 1,400
Acres of farmland flooded. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,000
State highway miles closed, August 28, 2011 . . . . . . . . . 531
Bridges damaged or destroyed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Town highway segments damaged. . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,260
FEMA Individual Assistance claims registered. . . . . . . 7,252
Number of FEMA Individual Assistance grants provided. . 4,300
Average FEMA Individual Assistance grant. . . . . . . . $5,623
No. of maximum ($30,200) FEMA Ind. Asst. grants . . . . . 160
Meals provided to Vermonters and volunteers. . . . . .16,000+
Number of of food shelves that provided free food. . . . . 60+

AmyWildt
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.”
JohnLazenby
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.CreatingaFund:“TheRightPeopleintheRightSeats”
I
n 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.
JohnLazenby

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
JohnLazenby
JohnLazenby
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.”
“Howcanwegetsomethingdone?”
“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.”

JohnLazenby
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.
AllenCrabtree
Over 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?’”
“Yourebuildhomes...yourebuildlives”
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

JohnLazenby/VermontCommunityFoundation
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.BuildingtheSystem:“We’reGoingtoDoItOurWay”
O
ne 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.
AmyWildt

AmyWildt
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.’”
“Youcouldn’tputitaway.Thesewerepeople”
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.”

E
veryone 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.’”
“LookWhatPeopleCanDo”
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.
APphoto/TobyTalbot

4.Communications:“WeHadtoKeepThisFrontandCenter”
I
t’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.
“Canyoucoverthis?”
“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.
“
PhotocourtesyoftheVermontChamberofCommerce
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.
PhotocourtesyoftheVermontChamberofCommerce

I
n 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
SteppingupforMobile-HomeSurvivors
“ 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.
APphoto/TobyTalbot

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.
“Thathomeisjustasimportant”
“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
APphoto/TobyTalbot
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.

C
harlie 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.“WeNeedtoRaiseThisMoneyNow”
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.”
“Weweresomovedbythat”
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?’”
“Peoplegivetoacause,
yes—buttheyalso
givetopeople.Andwe
hadenoughpeopleon
theboardwhowere
recognizedandwell-
known.Peoplefeltthat,
‘Iknowthecauseisreal,
Iknowtheneedisreal,
andItrustthepeople
whohaveaskedme.’”

“Everybodycametogether”
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.

A
t 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
“AStrongWebofConnectedness”
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’sgetstarted”
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.”
“Tohitthegroundrunningnexttime”
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.”

I
n 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-TackleWork”
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.”
“Nobodywaitedmorethanaweek”
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.
APphoto/TobyTalbot

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.
“Ijustalwayssaid‘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.
“Relationshipsallowthattohappen”
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.”

O
ne 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
FromHouseholdtoHousehold
In 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.

W
here 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
“WeHaveaHouse.WeSurvived”
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.“TheBestofVermont”—SummingUp&LookingAhead
I
rene 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’vedevelopedatemplate”
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.”
“Iwoulddoitagain”
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.
PhotocourtesyoftheTownofMendon

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
PhotocourtesyoftheTownofMendon
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.

A
nn 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.
FromaDestroyedMobileHomeToaNewLifeinWebsterville
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.”

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

APphoto/TobyTalbot
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 Fund
PO Box 843
Montpelier, Vermont 05601
www.VermontDisasterRecovery.com

Story of the VT Disaster Relief Fund

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