FEMA

[madhatter]

While you probably can purchase most any insurance you want for the right price, according to the local providers, Killington area is not considered a flood risk and did not offer or provide this. It was posted from an article on the Chat page.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32751

life preservers aren't routinely offered at the beach but if you can;t swim you bring one. as people are finding out FEMA gives up to 30k grants then it low interest loans from there up. Interestingly there are now red cross reps here urging everyone to apply for any qualified damage of any type. Washed out driveways included. Seems a stretch to me. I get some erosion no matter what. I live on a mountain. But since the area is declared a disaster I now qualify for assistance in repairing my driveway? Doubt I will file a claim. I can do most of the work myself w material that is on site. But I suppose I COULD get 10k for 1/2 mile of surepak and probably get a paid contractor to come and repair the minor culvert damage or even replace with a bigger one. This is where I think the gov over steps its boundaries and wastes money. Lost yer house? yeah you NEED help. from whoever will give it. Lost a little driveway surface and need to rake and grade? No one in utah should have to help me with that.

see this article for some more info

http://www.facebook.com/notes/rutland-h ... 7119578740

Detective Sgt. Eric Hudson of the Vermont State Police was the officer in charge out here. ( the one shumlin interrupted btw) Dam good guy he is too. Same w Bethel Fire Chief David Aldrighetti. Many other fine men and women were out and about as well, including two guys who came from Warren, VT with ATV's to offer assistance on stony brook.

[Coydog]

ANYTHING is available for the right price. If it exists, it can be bought at some price. Whether you can afford it or not is another thing .

Sure, like joy rides to the international space station.

In my opinion if you get a gov payout for total loss for flood damage it should be a buyout and condemned. ie you cannot rebuild there ( one person in town has told me that is likely to happen to him this time, not sure if that is the case, just what he said specifically to me)

Great idea - the same logic should apply to all those washed out bridges and roads the state foolishly built in areas that flooded.

[shortski]

ANYTHING is available for the right price. If it exists, it can be bought at some price. Whether you can afford it or not is another thing .

Sure, like joy rides to the international space station.

In my opinion if you get a gov payout for total loss for flood damage it should be a buyout and condemned. ie you cannot rebuild there ( one person in town has told me that is likely to happen to him this time, not sure if that is the case, just what he said specifically to me)

Great idea - the same logic should apply to all those washed out bridges and roads the state foolishly built in areas that flooded.

Roads are an accepted use in the flood plain I went through the rejection process when I wanted to put up a garage. In the end I could have done what's called a cut and fill and put in a parking pad of crushed stone, glad I didn't opt to do the project.

The restriction to no building at all is in the flood way.

[madhatter]

ANYTHING is available for the right price. If it exists, it can be bought at some price. Whether you can afford it or not is another thing .

Sure, like joy rides to the international space station.

In my opinion if you get a gov payout for total loss for flood damage it should be a buyout and condemned. ie you cannot rebuild there ( one person in town has told me that is likely to happen to him this time, not sure if that is the case, just what he said specifically to me)

Great idea - the same logic should apply to all those washed out bridges and roads the state foolishly built in areas that flooded.

bridges go over water more often than not, most bridges connect two rds, railways etc. Therefore both bridges and roads, almost by default, are built in areas prone to flooding. Now a house in a drainage, say a former camp converted before new zoning went into effect, maybe offer a buyout in exchange for quit claim and release to the state town fed whatever. What's so wrong with that logic? Keep the floodway open for high water and prevent extra debris from clogging up bridges, culverts etc down stream. A friend in town who has had flood damage more than once ,told me he will not be allowed to rebuild. I can see why. ( not sure if he is speculating or knows for sure) You can;t build w/in 50 ft off any river, stream etc. in stockbridge currently. 25 yrs ago? you could sh*t in your yard. Things change why not do something that makes sense from an economic, ecological and personal safety point of view? There are many rds up here that have half a dozen households and half a dozen bridges and culverts ( or more) over 6 + miles of rd. We should just throw whatever money and resources it takes to gain access to that destroyed, remote area? Why do you libs intentionally look for a fight all the goddam time? its really annoying.

[millerm277]

@madhatter, the other option is to tighten up the building standards in flood prone zones. It always seems to be the most middle of the road solution to me, but one that doesn't seem to get done that often.

If you're in a zone that floods a lot, you should be required to build it like a beach house. First floor is a garage and a staircase, and built pretty tough.

Do a few people need to be bought out? Absolutely. The guys who's homes literally wash away in storms (apologies to shortski), probably ought to be bought out. Otherwise, build them higher to keep them above the water.

[madhatter]

@madhatter, the other option is to tighten up the building standards in flood prone zones. It always seems to be the most middle of the road solution to me, but one that doesn't seem to get done that often.

If you're in a zone that floods a lot, you should be required to build it like a beach house. First floor is a garage and a staircase, and built pretty tough.

Do a few people need to be bought out? Absolutely. The guys who's homes literally wash away in storms (apologies to shortski), probably ought to be bought out. Otherwise, build them higher to keep them above the water.

good post , good point(s)

[Geoff]

@madhatter, the other option is to tighten up the building standards in flood prone zones. It always seems to be the most middle of the road solution to me, but one that doesn't seem to get done that often.

If you're in a zone that floods a lot, you should be required to build it like a beach house. First floor is a garage and a staircase, and built pretty tough.

Do a few people need to be bought out? Absolutely. The guys who's homes literally wash away in storms (apologies to shortski), probably ought to be bought out. Otherwise, build them higher to keep them above the water.

The problem is that people built oceanfront McMansions on stilts. They still wash away in big hurricanes and put a huge drain on the flood insurance system. If you built in that style in Vermont, the wall of debris would merely take out the stilts. Back in the day, a beach house was a shack or a trailer. If it washed away, you just built another one or hauled in another trailer.

I don't think there should be federal-subsidized flood insurance for new construction since it mostly subsidizes rich people.

[shortski]

I don't think there should be federal-subsidized flood insurance for new construction since it mostly subsidizes rich people.

The Federal Flood insurance is self funding prior year looses are reflected in following years premium, one of the reasons my flood insurance has gone from $400 three years ago to 1200 that I just paid in April.. The taxpayer monies get involved when there is a Federal Declaration of a Disaster which there are several, and each coves different benefits and carries their own parameters for qualification. Geoff's point is pertinent because the cost of getting insurance precludes all but the rich form affording it, the chicken and egg thing.

[Bubba]

It seems as some are starting to ask the difficult rebuild or relocate dilemma...


On Flood Plain, Pondering Wisdom of Rebuilding Anew

By KIRK SEMPLE


PHOENICIA, N.Y. — For all the destruction and heartache left by Tropical Storm Irene in the Catskill Mountains, the storm was only the latest to cause catastrophic flooding in the region in recent years. With each one, residents have cleaned up, rebuilt and moved on, as resolutely as ever. Now, though, some are asking a once-unthinkable question: Should the rebuilding come to a halt?

Even a local state assemblyman, Kevin A. Cahill, a Democrat, said that allowing this cycle to continue, at least in some places, seemed increasingly foolhardy.

“Are there communities that simply can’t be protected adequately and should be relocated?” Mr. Cahill said. “I hope and believe that rational thinking will prevail, as opposed to emotional thinking.”

“Building on a flood plain — there ought to be some serious thinking about that,” he continued. “When you look around at communities with the toughest building codes, you will see that they are significantly far less hit. Common sense works.”

For centuries, flooding has been a fact of life for the Catskills, where villages and hamlets dot the banks of the creeks and streams that thread through the valleys and hollows. But the hazards of this arrangement were laid bare during Tropical Storm Irene, as flooding turned Victorian homes to kindling, collapsed cement bridges, felled woods and splattered once-verdant settings with mud and debris.

In this hamlet, set in an Ulster County valley, two creeks swelled violently, their waters temporarily swallowing parts of town and turning Main Street into a rushing river. It was the third time since last October that flooding had inundated the hamlet.

Recent studies have asserted that the region’s weather is getting more severe, including heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense flooding. The last three large flooding emergencies — in 1996 and 2005, and the disaster of recent days — were all considered 100-year floods, meaning that they had breached a level that had only a 1 percent chance of being exceeded in any given year.

Environmentalists and others in the region say these developments should force a reassessment of the Catskills’ building and zoning regulations, possibly even leading to a moratorium on further construction, or even human habitation, in certain flood plains.

“Even though it’s an emotional issue, you have to ask: Do we have those structures in the right places?” said Alan White, executive director of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, who has lived and worked in the Catskills for three decades. “These are long-term policy questions that need to be answered.”

“We have a new normal now,” he added.

Mr. White and similarly minded Catskill residents acknowledged that this was a difficult time to raise such matters, given that families are struggling to reclaim their homes and businesses.

But these sorts of discussions are not terribly popular in ordinary times.

Many lifelong denizens of the Catskills have cherished their independence, valuing the traditions and quietude of rural living and bristling at regulatory intervention, particularly of the environmental sort, imposed by officials in Albany and New York City, which gets 90 percent of its drinking water from the Catskills.

Any suggestion that they may have to further change their way of life is often greeted with disdain.

“Historically, we’ve been the stewards of the environment, then state and city officials came up and imposed rules,” said Robert A. Stanley, superintendent of Shandaken, a town in Ulster County that includes Phoenicia. “We’re not sitting in an office pushing a button. We live here. We know what water does.”

Phoenicia, which was founded in 1853, has been wrestling with environmental regulators over permits to dredge Stony Clove Stream, one of the two creeks that bracket the hamlet and have been overflowing with increasing regularity.

Town administrators contend that dredging will keep the channel clear of debris and give the water someplace to go rather than into the hamlet’s streets, homes and shops. But many environmentalists contend that dredging is only a stopgap measure that may in the long run cause more harm than good.

In an interview here late last week, Mr. Stanley, who has been leading round-the-clock recovery efforts, said dredging had been used for years to forestall flooding, and he dismissed the suggestion that some buildings, or perhaps even the entire hamlet of 400 people, should be relocated.

“This stream has to stay in the channel,” he declared, pointing to the nearby Stony Clove Stream, which, like the region’s other waterways, was full of so much soil and runoff since the storm that it resembled chocolate milk. “We’re not going to move this hamlet.”

Nevertheless, the destruction left by the tropical storm has already begun to alter the mind-set of some business owners and homeowners. Last year, PSK Supermarkets, which operates a chain of Foodtown and Freshtown stores in New York State, spent millions of dollars to open a store in the Village of Margaretville, in Delaware County, about 20 miles west of Phoenicia.

Noah Katz, a co-president of the company, said he knew he was building on a flood plain and was aware of the damage that major storms had already inflicted on the village. But since a couple of 100-year floods had already occurred in the past 15 years, the likelihood of another such storm anytime soon seemed slim.

“We thought we had a hundred years,” he said.

Tropical Storm Irene scrambled his math. The east branch of the Delaware River, which borders the store’s property, overflowed its banks, blasted through the store’s eastern wall, turned the interior into a nine-foot-deep whirlpool of groceries and mud, carved a 15-foot-deep crater in the parking lot and clawed off the northern wing of the building where a CVS pharmacy was located.

As he waded through ankle-deep mud and toppled foodstuffs in the store’s aisles, Mr. Katz said he was committed to rebuilding in the same location. But he allowed that after further engineering and economic analysis, he might relocate. “We’ll look at everything,” he said.

Back in Phoenicia, Ann Davies and Jan Ryan are in a somewhat similar position, though theirs is a more emotional calculus.

In 1991, they bought a Cape Cod-style house from the 1920s on property at the confluence of the hamlet’s two streams. They built an extension and a pool, and they painted it a light gray with aqua trim. From their back porch, they watch black bears wade in the streams and patrol the nearby woods.

They fell in love with the place, splitting their time between Phoenicia and Manhattan. But they have also learned the hard realities of the Catskills.

Floods have inundated their basement five times and carted away sections of their pool deck. During Tropical Storm Irene, the flood levels breached the back porch for the first time, rising up their living room walls, destroying furniture and other belongings, and depositing muck everywhere.

Each flood has cost them at least $50,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, they said. “Oh, the real estate lady said, ‘Only once every 100 years,’ ” Ms. Davies, a psychoanalyst and actress, recalled with a dark chuckle.

Each time they have repaired the damage and stayed put, but this time they are mulling the possibility of selling.

As she tugged off yellow rubber gloves following a long day of cleaning, Ms. Davies scanned the back lawn, now a mud flat, and gazed out at the creeks that had become their nemesis. “It’s a beautiful house,” she said, “when it’s not flooded.”

[madhatter]

It seems as some are starting to ask the difficult rebuild or relocate dilemma...


On Flood Plain, Pondering Wisdom of Rebuilding Anew

By KIRK SEMPLE


PHOENICIA, N.Y. — For all the destruction and heartache left by Tropical Storm Irene in the Catskill Mountains, the storm was only the latest to cause catastrophic flooding in the region in recent years. With each one, residents have cleaned up, rebuilt and moved on, as resolutely as ever. Now, though, some are asking a once-unthinkable question: Should the rebuilding come to a halt?

Even a local state assemblyman, Kevin A. Cahill, a Democrat, said that allowing this cycle to continue, at least in some places, seemed increasingly foolhardy.

“Are there communities that simply can’t be protected adequately and should be relocated?” Mr. Cahill said. “I hope and believe that rational thinking will prevail, as opposed to emotional thinking.”

“Building on a flood plain — there ought to be some serious thinking about that,” he continued. “When you look around at communities with the toughest building codes, you will see that they are significantly far less hit. Common sense works.”

For centuries, flooding has been a fact of life for the Catskills, where villages and hamlets dot the banks of the creeks and streams that thread through the valleys and hollows. But the hazards of this arrangement were laid bare during Tropical Storm Irene, as flooding turned Victorian homes to kindling, collapsed cement bridges, felled woods and splattered once-verdant settings with mud and debris.

In this hamlet, set in an Ulster County valley, two creeks swelled violently, their waters temporarily swallowing parts of town and turning Main Street into a rushing river. It was the third time since last October that flooding had inundated the hamlet.

Recent studies have asserted that the region’s weather is getting more severe, including heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense flooding. The last three large flooding emergencies — in 1996 and 2005, and the disaster of recent days — were all considered 100-year floods, meaning that they had breached a level that had only a 1 percent chance of being exceeded in any given year.

Environmentalists and others in the region say these developments should force a reassessment of the Catskills’ building and zoning regulations, possibly even leading to a moratorium on further construction, or even human habitation, in certain flood plains.

“Even though it’s an emotional issue, you have to ask: Do we have those structures in the right places?” said Alan White, executive director of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, who has lived and worked in the Catskills for three decades. “These are long-term policy questions that need to be answered.”

“We have a new normal now,” he added.

Mr. White and similarly minded Catskill residents acknowledged that this was a difficult time to raise such matters, given that families are struggling to reclaim their homes and businesses.

But these sorts of discussions are not terribly popular in ordinary times.

Many lifelong denizens of the Catskills have cherished their independence, valuing the traditions and quietude of rural living and bristling at regulatory intervention, particularly of the environmental sort, imposed by officials in Albany and New York City, which gets 90 percent of its drinking water from the Catskills.

Any suggestion that they may have to further change their way of life is often greeted with disdain.

“Historically, we’ve been the stewards of the environment, then state and city officials came up and imposed rules,” said Robert A. Stanley, superintendent of Shandaken, a town in Ulster County that includes Phoenicia. “We’re not sitting in an office pushing a button. We live here. We know what water does.”

Phoenicia, which was founded in 1853, has been wrestling with environmental regulators over permits to dredge Stony Clove Stream, one of the two creeks that bracket the hamlet and have been overflowing with increasing regularity.

Town administrators contend that dredging will keep the channel clear of debris and give the water someplace to go rather than into the hamlet’s streets, homes and shops. But many environmentalists contend that dredging is only a stopgap measure that may in the long run cause more harm than good.

In an interview here late last week, Mr. Stanley, who has been leading round-the-clock recovery efforts, said dredging had been used for years to forestall flooding, and he dismissed the suggestion that some buildings, or perhaps even the entire hamlet of 400 people, should be relocated.

“This stream has to stay in the channel,” he declared, pointing to the nearby Stony Clove Stream, which, like the region’s other waterways, was full of so much soil and runoff since the storm that it resembled chocolate milk. “We’re not going to move this hamlet.”

Nevertheless, the destruction left by the tropical storm has already begun to alter the mind-set of some business owners and homeowners. Last year, PSK Supermarkets, which operates a chain of Foodtown and Freshtown stores in New York State, spent millions of dollars to open a store in the Village of Margaretville, in Delaware County, about 20 miles west of Phoenicia.

Noah Katz, a co-president of the company, said he knew he was building on a flood plain and was aware of the damage that major storms had already inflicted on the village. But since a couple of 100-year floods had already occurred in the past 15 years, the likelihood of another such storm anytime soon seemed slim.

“We thought we had a hundred years,” he said.

Tropical Storm Irene scrambled his math. The east branch of the Delaware River, which borders the store’s property, overflowed its banks, blasted through the store’s eastern wall, turned the interior into a nine-foot-deep whirlpool of groceries and mud, carved a 15-foot-deep crater in the parking lot and clawed off the northern wing of the building where a CVS pharmacy was located.

As he waded through ankle-deep mud and toppled foodstuffs in the store’s aisles, Mr. Katz said he was committed to rebuilding in the same location. But he allowed that after further engineering and economic analysis, he might relocate. “We’ll look at everything,” he said.

Back in Phoenicia, Ann Davies and Jan Ryan are in a somewhat similar position, though theirs is a more emotional calculus.

In 1991, they bought a Cape Cod-style house from the 1920s on property at the confluence of the hamlet’s two streams. They built an extension and a pool, and they painted it a light gray with aqua trim. From their back porch, they watch black bears wade in the streams and patrol the nearby woods.

They fell in love with the place, splitting their time between Phoenicia and Manhattan. But they have also learned the hard realities of the Catskills.

Floods have inundated their basement five times and carted away sections of their pool deck. During Tropical Storm Irene, the flood levels breached the back porch for the first time, rising up their living room walls, destroying furniture and other belongings, and depositing muck everywhere.

Each flood has cost them at least $50,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, they said. “Oh, the real estate lady said, ‘Only once every 100 years,’ ” Ms. Davies, a psychoanalyst and actress, recalled with a dark chuckle.

Each time they have repaired the damage and stayed put, but this time they are mulling the possibility of selling.

As she tugged off yellow rubber gloves following a long day of cleaning, Ms. Davies scanned the back lawn, now a mud flat, and gazed out at the creeks that had become their nemesis. “It’s a beautiful house,” she said, “when it’s not flooded.”

can I get a link to that so I can share with others outside of KZone? thanks

[Bubba]

can I get a link to that so I can share with others outside of KZone? thanks

The NYT site requires a log in.

[shortski]

Ahh new election cycle coming, up lets see if this passes who gets the abandoned property and who is going to be Grandfathered in, political cronyism at it's best..

[millerm277]

can I get a link to that so I can share with others outside of KZone? thanks

The NYT site requires a log in.

It doesn't, it only requires a log in if you've already read your 20 free articles a month or whatever.

Not that I'm advocating "avoiding" their log in, but if you hit the stop button on your browser as soon as you see text on the page load, the log in message won't come up and you can read the article even if you are over the limit. (Might take a try or two to do it).

[Coydog]

bridges go over water more often than not, most bridges connect two rds, railways etc. Therefore both bridges and roads, almost by default, are built in areas prone to flooding. Now a house in a drainage, say a former camp converted before new zoning went into effect, maybe offer a buyout in exchange for quit claim and release to the state town fed whatever. What's so wrong with that logic? Keep the floodway open for high water and prevent extra debris from clogging up bridges, culverts etc down stream. A friend in town who has had flood damage more than once ,told me he will not be allowed to rebuild. I can see why. ( not sure if he is speculating or knows for sure) You can;t build w/in 50 ft off any river, stream etc. in stockbridge currently. 25 yrs ago? you could sh*t in your yard. Things change why not do something that makes sense from an economic, ecological and personal safety point of view? There are many rds up here that have half a dozen households and half a dozen bridges and culverts ( or more) over 6 + miles of rd. We should just throw whatever money and resources it takes to gain access to that destroyed, remote area? Why do you libs intentionally look for a fight all the goddam time? its really annoying.

So it's ok to rebuild bridges and roads because they're just gonna flood by default, but we cannot allow people to rebuild their homes in certain areas because they might fall victim to a natural disaster every 100 years or so. I guess if Powdr accepts federal/state money or loans, they shouldn't be allowed to rebuild KBL in its current location.

The 50 ft setback regulation (common to many Vermont towns) applies to roadways, property borders and right of ways, including rivers and streams. As far as I know, flooding was not the primary or even secondary concern of the provision.

What I find truly annoying is the constant whining by some right wingers about too big or too much government in their own lives but these same folks are more than happy to have government regulate in great detail the behavior of other people's lives.

[Geoff]

Geoff's point is pertinent because the cost of getting insurance precludes all but the rich form affording it, the chicken and egg thing.

Sort of. My point was that because the rich can get flood insurance to build oceanfront McMansions, they build expensive structures that are at very high risk of washing away. That drives up the premiums for everybody else since it's a common risk pool.