Pearl Dennis and her partner Erik Holcomb live in an old Victorian house in Cambridge village, near where the Seymour River meets the Lamoille.
When floodwaters filled their home last July, Holcomb stayed to save their hardwood floors. Now, after being flooded twice in one year — despite their house not being located in one of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s mapped flood hazard areas — they’re trying to get funding to elevate their historic home.
Vermont Public’s Abagael Giles went to Cambridge to hear where things stand a year later. She spoke with Dennis at her home. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Pearl Dennis: My name is Pearl Dennis and we're in Cambridge village. We live right here off of Route 15. And we are discussing the rebuilding and aftermath of the July flooding.
Abagael Giles: Can you refresh me again, just for the sake of you know, today, on like, what you guys encountered when you came back to your house?
Pearl Dennis: It was just trashed. I mean, it was just garbage. We had 8 to 10 inches of standing water in our first floor, after the basement was already filled up.
So, we tried to move as much as we could of our electronics and important things when we knew the flood was coming, in preparation. But then, you know, there's just so much stuff. It's a home that we've lived in for almost 10 years.
So in the days following, we had to sort through that stuff and, you know, throw out boxes and boxes of personal memories, photo albums. You know, what have you — clothing, furniture, all that little materialistic stuff that, you know, gives you the pleasures of life that were now gone.
Erik Holcomb, my other half, he actually stayed here during the whole flood. Really, I think his efforts of staying here kind of saved our house, because that extra silt and stuff from the waters wasn't able to collect and form on our floors. So luckily, we were able to salvage our original wood floors.
This is a house that was built in 1850, so those extra details are really special to us.
We were flooded again in December, right before Christmas, and we still had not moved our electrical box upstairs, which we have now done. We came within inches of losing all of the HVAC stuff that we had just completed, which is thousands and thousands of dollars. We do plan on moving our hot water on-demand tank upstairs.
Abagael Giles: Can you tell me just a little bit about what the aftermath of that event was like?
Pearl Dennis: It was doing a lot of paperwork. We spent hours and hours and hours, like probably months, if you were to accumulate it all, just trying to navigate the stuff with FEMA and then the stuff with the state of Vermont, Efficiency Vermont.
And, just a lot of repetitiveness, which eats up a lot of time, which is really, really difficult when you're trying to rebuild at the same time, but also having to do that in order to get financing in order to rebuild.
We know that we have to raise our home here. We've been flooded four times in the last 15 years. We have an option to do the buyout, which means they'll completely tear down our property, which then removes the tax revenue for the town and the state.
Or, you have the option to try to have them help you raise your house. And so we want to do the raise-your-house thing. But from people that were dealing with [Tropical Storm] Irene, some of them are just barely getting those funds now. And that was 11 — 13 years ago, right? So like, how many more floods are we going to have in the time that it takes for us to get these funds allocated to us?
A lot of the people who are in charge and making these decisions, it seems like they're just as lost as we are. It's just a battle where I feel like we're just constantly spinning our wheels trying to get things done in a timely manner, and just being shut down and being shut down and being shut down.
Abagael Giles: What's been the impact of that for you, emotionally? Feel free to punt that question if you'd rather not.
Pearl Dennis: It can be such a heavy burden all the time. You're trying to decide, “Am I doing the right thing? Am I not doing the right thing?” You know, so you're always second guessing yourself. Like, should I just sell the house, take the buyout? Or do I keep investing my life into saving this home that we've created?
Also, the fact that it's a historic Victorian home is really important to us, because that's why we bought it. It was kind of our dream home. And we feel like we need to be stewards for all the people and families that lived here going back to the beginning of time, you know?
I just keep saying, “Hey, look: Today, every day, is just a little bit better. You know, yesterday, we had all of that stuff that sucked that we had to deal with. But, look, we got this done, that done. Today's a little bit better.”
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Abagael Giles: Is there anything that you learned or that would have been helpful to you?
Pearl Dennis: Upgrade your utilities as soon as possible. So many of us live in these old houses in Vermont, where everything was stored in the basement. And for houses that you thought were safe, far away from the river, not in the path of the stream, the reality is that if it's going to happen, it's going to affect your basement and ruin your utilities.
So move everything up. Don't keep your memories in a box in the basement.
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