By Dan Dowling, regional communications manager
“We opened the hatch to the basement, and it was coming in like a fire hose.”
We met Robin at the Lyndonville shelter after the flooding in Vermont on July 11th, 2024. She and her family had to evacuate their home after flash flooding surged into their Lyndonville home. Heavy rain from the remnants of Hurricane Beryl flooded many towns across Vermont after some areas received as much as 3 to 6 inches of rain in less than 12 hours. Exactly one year earlier, Robin and her family were also evacuating from torrential rain.
Robin was in Barre for the Great Vermont Flood of 2023 when many residents were affected by heavy rain and needed to find a new place to live. After spending time in a hotel room for most of the summer after the flood, Robin and her daughter, Margaret, began looking for a more permanent place to live. Robin said she struggled to find an affordable place to rent for her family.
“We decided to buy a house. We found this house that we bought in Lyndonville. It was a beautiful house. They made us buy flood insurance, thank God,” said Robin.
As they settled into their new place, rain in November flooded the basement. But when strong storms arrived on July 11th, 2024, over 4 inches of rain fell on the Lyndonville area, Robin and her family were forced to flee their home once again.
“We called the fire department and they came. They said we had five minutes to get in the boat, so I grabbed my meds and a few other important things. We got in the boats and came to the firehouse, where they were wonderful to us,” said Robin.
Robin and her family have been spending time at the Red Cross shelter as clean-up is beginning on her flooded home. She says she has been busy handling all of the phone calls from the shelter while the rest of her family tends to the clean-up at home.
“I had people lined up to go pumping out the house the minute the water went down. I lined up an electrician, and the powers is back on and all inspected. We found our two kitties safe and sound,” she says.
The Red Cross responds to a disaster every eight minutes, and our volunteers are always ready to help those in need. Since 2019, we’ve seen a six-fold increase in the annual number of disasters causing $1 billion or more in damage, compared to 40 years ago. This relentless pace of severe disasters has created more ongoing emergency needs — including for families who have been displaced year after year by extreme weather.
Robin is grateful for the community support and the help from the Red Cross when she and her family needed it most. She shares that the Red Cross volunteers did something special for her daughter and son-in-law to celebrate their wedding anniversary from the shelter.
“The people have been wonderful. Today is Margaret and Brad's anniversary and they went and made a special effort to get a cake and a card and that was nice. The volunteers have gone to great lengths to help people, including me,” says Robin.
Robin and her family look forward to returning to their home soon. They hope that they’ll have more than a year in between flooding storms.
All Red Cross assistance is provided free of charge and made possible by the generosity of the public. To donate to Red Cross Disaster Relief and help people affected by disasters big and small, visit www.redcross.org.
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