Vermont Episcopalians deal with back-to-back floods, find hope in helping others

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopalians and others in Vermont are reeling after two major flooding events in three weeks, including the most recent rainfall that the Rev. Ann Hockridge called a “once in a 1,000-year flood.”

Hockridge is the part-time interim priest at St. Andrew’s in St. Johnsbury, a town of about 6,000 that is located in the northeast corner of the state that officially is called the Northeast Kingdom. That area was among the hardest hit in the most recent July 29-30 rains that Hockridge said at one point produced more than 8 inches in 6 hours.

In the mountainous area, she told Episcopal News Service, that volume of rain created rivers that rushed down hillsides, uprooting trees and picking up boulders before crashing into homes that were either knocked off their foundations or were washed downstream. Some happened in the center of town, with Hockridge calling them “urban landslides.”

Many area roads were washed out, including paved state highways. Other roadways are marked by deep crevices carved out by floodwaters.

This heavy rainfall came after Vermont was drenched in mid-July by remnants of Hurricane Beryl, which wreaked havoc in the Caribbean before hitting the Texas Gulf coast and traveling through the Midwest and on to the Northeast. The Northeast Kingdom was hit especially hard then, too, Hockridge said.

In an Aug. 1 letter to the diocese, Vermont Bishop Shannon MacVean-Brown said that St. Johnsbury was experiencing what news reports said was the worst flood in the town’s recorded history. She noted that the towns of Lyndonville and Island Pond also have been badly hit.

She encouraged people to contribute to a diocesan relief fund and to pray “for everyone in harm’s way from the floods and for all those seeking to care for the most vulnerable people in our communities.”

Hockridge said the most recent rains also have knocked local people’s sense of safety off-kilter. Some of the worst-hit areas of town previously had been considered safe from flooding. “It feels like the rules don’t apply anymore,” she said. Houses that were sitting “high and dry,” far from the river, now are gone.

With much of the city’s landscape so quickly altered, “It’s hard to orient yourself to what was here before,” she said.

Some St. Andrew’s parishioners were stranded in their homes for several days during these most recent rains, she said, and some whose homes had been damaged in mid-July hadn’t had time to repair them before the latest deluge.

The church had some minor flooding, with water and mud in the parish hall. A crevice along one wall of the foundation opened after the earlier July flooding, which members jokingly dubbed Beryl Canyon.

Hockridge admitted she was having to “dig deep every day looking for hope” after two damaging floods back-to-back. She finds comfort in seeing people help each other clean out basements and pull cars out of rivers, and watching firefighters find ways to check on people cut off from roads. She also serves as a full-time hospice chaplain, and the nurses have been determined to make sure their patients have the medicines and supplies they need.

She said a recent Sunday Gospel reading of Jesus feeding the 5,000 (John 6:1-14) has helped her find hope. In that story, a large crowd gathered to see Jesus and needed to be fed. She said that people there gave what they could, and it turned into a feast that more than fed those assembled.

“That’s what people are doing now,” she said, doing what they can. “Giving money, mucking out basements – it’s strangers helping people, not just neighbors.”

But people also need to start participating in issues of climate change, Hockridge said. Given all she has seen and experienced, “the urgency is great for me right now.”

It’s now commonly accepted and scientifically documented that climate change can affect the intensity and frequency of precipitation, as reported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and international bodies.

“Climate change is real,” Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott acknowledged on July 11, after the rains from Beryl hit the state. He added, “I think we all need to come to grips with that regardless of your political persuasion and deal with it, because we need to build back stronger, safer and smarter.”

In her letter to the diocese, MacVean-Brown urged people to pray “that leaders across our state and the globe will make a shared commitment to caring for God’s creation and healing our climate.”

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.