In 2018, Zack Porter moved from Missoula, Montana, to Vermont.

Porter, the executive director of a small regional forest conservation nonprofit, grew up in New England but had lived in the West for about 15 years. As Western states endure hotter, dryer summers, however, Missoula has been increasingly smothered with smoke from nearby wildfires, and Porter and his wife grew worried about the health of their young daughter.

After “two back-to-back horrific smoke seasons,” he said, the family decided to pack up and move to Montpelier.

As the world warms, Vermont has been touted as a climate refuge, a place that has drawn people — like Porter and his family — who are seeking escape from the worst effects of climate change.

But this summer has forced Vermonters to reexamine that reputation. Unrelenting rainfall — a phenomenon exacerbated by climate change, experts say — earlier this month left Vermont’s capital and other towns underwater.

Before that, in late June, some parts of the state were in fact experiencing a moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, smoke from Quebec wildfires has periodically poured into the state, triggering air quality alerts. And blooms of toxic cyanobacteria, which are linked to warmer water temperatures, have repeatedly closed beaches along Lake Champlain and been detected in other bodies of water, according to Vermont Department of Health data.

Porter’s house was spared from the flooding. But the destruction in downtown Montpelier reminded him of that wrought in the coastal South by Hurricane Katrina, he said. And the appearance of wildfire smoke — a factor that had driven them away from Montana — was “heartbreaking,” he said.

In the 12 years since Tropical Storm Irene struck the state, “This image of Vermont being this quiet, happy refuge really kind of took over again,” Porter said. “Vermont has a lot of things going for it. But we aren’t immune to natural disasters.”

‘Vermont was the best contender’

Vermont regularly appears at the top of lists of states best poised to weather global warming. The relatively cool climate makes the state more resistant to extreme heat waves, and with no coastline, residents need not worry about rising sea levels. Abundant, year-round precipitation insulates Vermonters from drought and water shortages.

Many recent arrivals, like Porter, have cited climate change as a reason for their move, according to Cheryl Morse, a professor of environmental studies and geography and geosciences at the University of Vermont.

“There’s a belief that Vermont will have enough water most of the time, that it will have a more temperate climate in terms of weather, in terms of temperature,” said Morse, who has studied migration into the state. “In their imagination, Vermont presented a safer climate with plenty of water, access to land and small community settlement.”

One such new arrival was Cymone Bedford. In 2020, Bedford moved to Vermont from Atlanta, Georgia, with the goal of building an eco-friendly home: She lives in Johnson, in an off-grid “Earthship,” a house designed for self-sufficiency and sustainability.

“I was thinking, like, where would I want to retire? Like, where would I want to live long-term, that I know if I plant roots and build community, I can comfortably stay there during climate change?” she said. “And based on my research, I felt like Vermont was the best contender.”

Bedford, a municipal planning director, did not suffer any damage personally in the recent flooding. Johnson as a whole, though, was hit hard by the rising Lamoille River: The grocery store was gutted, as were the Johnson Health Center and the town’s wastewater facility.

“Maybe some of the branding that Vermont is, you know, just like blanketly the best place for climate change will need to have some caveats,” Bedford said.

‘This summer has maybe burst the bubble’

Despite its reputation, Vermont is expected to face — or is already facing — a slew of unpleasant or dangerous phenomena linked to rising temperatures: flooding, heat waves, wildfire smoke, algae blooms, tick-borne diseases, according to Jared Ulmer, the climate and health program manager at the Vermont Department of Health.

“This summer has maybe burst the bubble a little bit in what probably was more of just a myth, of Vermont being in an ideal climate refuge,” Ulmer said.

This week, Morse, the UVM professor, sent a survey to about 25 recent arrivals in Vermont who have previously participated in her research, asking if the flooding or wildfire smoke had caused them to reconsider their move.

As of Monday morning, Morse had received responses from 17 people. Of those, six said that their homes or property had been personally affected by the flooding.

But only one respondent said the recent weather had caused her to question her relocation to Vermont.

“We’ve had a few days of really smoky weather, reminding us of living out West,” said the woman, who lives in northern Vermont, according to an anonymized response shared by Morse. “It’s been disappointing, we put a lot of time, effort and money into our move to VT with the hopes of getting away from some of these recent weather events.”

Every other person who responded to Morse’s survey said that they were happy to be living in Vermont.

“It is disappointing to have such a strange summer of rain and smoky air, but we also recognize how terrible it is in many other places,” said one Chittenden County man. “Vermont remains beautiful through it all and we will recover better than some areas.”

‘You can’t buy that’

Most people interviewed by VTDigger, including Bedford and Porter, the relatively recent arrivals, agreed that Vermont is still in a better position than most other states.

“In the largest sense, we’re probably safer than some other places: We’re wet, which on the whole is probably better than dry, and we’re far enough north that our worst heat waves will likely be mild compared with some,” Bill McKibben, an activist and Middlebury environmental studies professor, said in an email earlier this month.

When it comes to weathering natural disasters, many argue that Vermont’s best feature is more cultural than meteorological: the state’s social cohesion. The value placed on community and cooperation, some said, helped residents weather Covid-19 and is apparent in the outpouring of support after the flooding.

“I feel like there is a localism culture in Vermont that is mutually supportive and group-oriented,” said Bedford, the Johnson resident. “And you can’t buy that. You can’t even legislate that. It’s there or it’s not.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont was seen as a climate haven. This summer has complicated that image..

Kristin Atwood, the town clerk and treasurer in Barton, spent most of her waking hours last week subbing in as part of the town’s road crew. 

This week, she’s leading the municipal outreach to affected residents, trying to persuade neighbors she’s known since childhood to accept help recovering from the worst flooding to hit this small Orleans County town in living memory. 

As the only full-time town employee who’s not able to operate heavy machinery, Atwood took on the tasks of driving all the back roads to find washed-out sections and place orange cones around them, so that others could get to work fixing them, she said in an interview on Wednesday. 

That’s why, when representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived at her office without warning the previous Saturday morning to visit residences damaged in last week’s historic flooding, the homes she knew of to show them were those of people who had posted pictures on social media, she said.

“I only got a call when people were outside my door,” Atwood said. “I didn’t have time to organize a list.”

With new Vermont counties added to the major disaster declaration Friday morning, Atwood hopes the federal assessors will come back to Barton. 

Going door to door on Monday and Tuesday, she’s found a lot for them to see — dozens of residences that were severely flooded in town, both on both the north and south side of Barton Village and in downtown Orleans Village.

In Barton, and other small towns across the state impacted by flooding, municipal officials and nonprofit groups are realizing that the people who may need the most help are often the least willing or able to reach out and request it. You have to talk to them, and even then they may not reveal the full extent of what they are facing. To know that, you have to visit and see for yourself.

In Glover, another Orleans County town, the new town administrator, Theresa Perron, coordinated with Glover Rescue volunteers and other townspeople late last week, trying to reach every affected household. At least 10 and likely “well over” suffered damage she called “extensive” to their living space, some of which she was able to show FEMA representatives. 

In addition to the door-knocking, Atwood has asked the owner and clerks at the nearby C&C Supermarket to try to engage anyone buying large amounts of cleanup supplies, such as garbage bags and bleach, to find out where they live. 

In Greensboro Bend — a village in the Orleans County town of Greensboro between Glover and Hardwick — Jen Thompson, who co-owns Smith’s Grocery with her husband, Brendan, is taking on that role. 

The store is up and running, although it took on water in the basement. Thompson is coordinating with another small business owner in Stannard who is trying to visit and check on every home. 

“A lot of people, particularly in these areas, do not have internet and social media,” Thompson said on Thursday. “I feel like the damage is out there and I feel like it is a lot more than we know. It’s just trying to figure out who they are.”

‘People don’t like to ask for help’

For town leaders and social service organizations, finding those most impacted by the flooding is only the first challenge. The second is getting them to agree to accept assistance from people outside of their immediate family and friends.

“People don’t like to ask for help. They think their issue is nothing compared to somebody else’s,” said Thompson.

Atwood echoed that sentiment. “Asking for help is hard, especially for a lot of Vermonters. It’s an independent group,” she said in an interview on Wednesday. 

When she visited, people smiled and shrugged and told her, “We made out fine” and “What can you do?” when she asked them how they were doing, she said. 

At that point, the people she spoke with hadn’t called 2-1-1, Vermont’s flood damage hotline, but they promised to do so once she explained that reporting damage could help their neighbors access federal funds. 

“Many of these houses are just over that line of acceptable” for safely living in, Atwood said. “A lot of the folks are older people used to doing for themselves and they are plugging away.”

Over the course of those two days, she gave out four dehumidifiers and 22 industrial-strength fans — everything that had been delivered the previous week to the town hall by the Vermont National Guard. 

She wasn’t sure on Wednesday morning how many would actually stop by the “Multi Agency Resource Center,” a gathering of state and regional resources that was going to be set up the following day beneath the town offices on Barton’s village square. If people heard about it, some would need to get a ride — many personal vehicles were damaged by flooding. 

On Thursday afternoon, a modest but steady stream of visitors was passing through the MARC, as it’s called by Vermont Emergency Management, in the basement of the Barton Memorial Building, which was flanked by large vehicles showing the logos of the Salvation Army and Red Cross. The pop-up center is scheduled to remain until 5 p.m. Saturday. 

Outside, most of the people were gathering to pick up cases of water and a bucket of cleaning supplies from the Salvation Army, and a hot meal of sauerkraut and kielbasa from the Red Cross. Nearby, staff from the Vermont Food Bank and Northeast Kingdom Community Action, or NEKCA, answered questions and distributed food boxes, diapers and flashlights.

The Vermont Department of Health also had a table there, with free water-testing kits available for those with household springs and wells, as well as informational flyers that outlined the risk and potential health impacts of mold growth and how to safely clean out your home following a flood. 

But several people had also made it inside to consult with the state Agency of Human Services about the loss of items purchased through the Three Squares food assistance program, said regional field representative Chris Mitchell. Nearby staff from the Department of Labor said they also had assisted a few people with information about unemployment insurance. 

Momentum seemed to be building throughout the day as people in and around Barton told each other about what was there, Mitchell said. He knows they need to do more than simply tell town officials and state representatives, and announce the pop-up center on social media.  

“We’re hoping word of mouth works,” Mitchell said. “We’re trying to spread the word.”

NEKCA is also aware that personal outreach is essential, said Casey Winterson, the group’s director of economic and community services. That’s one reason the nonprofit purchased two mobile units of their own, so they could provide direct services outside their offices in Newport and St. Johnsbury. 

On Wednesday, his staff were in Groton, where they made contact with one family with young children who were without shelter and no longer able to stay in a campground that had been closed due to flooding, he said. 

‘We need to go to them’ 

Consistent engagement is needed to reach many of the residents of the Northeast Kingdom and other rural regions who need the most help to recover after the flooding, said town officials. 

These are households headed by elderly or disabled people, and those that have taken in extended families impacted by substance abuse, many including young children. Many could use a hand in clearing out the water and cleaning up what was left behind.

There were a few homes in Glover where cleanup appeared to be challenging the residents’ resources, whether financially, physically or emotionally, said Perron, the town administrator. “Some were overwhelmed with how to do it and what to do, or can’t do it. Some people do not have the capacity to make that happen,” she said.

Atwood estimated that in Barton there are at least 15 homes in town where there still is a significant amount of basic cleanup work to do, removing water-damaged items and housing materials. But for some, she said, “the help that is being accepted is the help that just shows up.”

That was the primary reason David “Opie” Upson, the town manager in Hardwick, declined the state’s offer to put the regional pop-up resource center in Hardwick. After visiting 50 affected households himself earlier in the week, he did not see how the center could help the dozen that still had significant damage they are unable to address, let alone the roughly seven that are not salvageable, he said. 

“These are folks that aren’t going to show up at a crisis center. These folks won’t go to a multi-agency anything,” he said. “We need to go to them.”

He had asked his contact at the Agency of Human Services to provide direct individual assistance to those households. “This is a major construction project for these families,” Upson said. Meanwhile, “where they live is not getting any drier.”

Trying to bridge the gap

Across the Northeast Kingdom and the state, family, friends and neighbors are showing up to help each other and their local business community recover. But in every community, there are people who have lost connections to both formal and informal resources. 

In Orleans County, like elsewhere, two relatively new nonprofit groups have stepped in to try to bridge the gap. 

“The opioid epidemic has destroyed a lot of familial connections,” said Meghan Wayland on Monday afternoon while organizing donated food and cleaning supplies at the NEKO Depot, located in the back rooms of the Orleans Federated Church in Orleans Village. That’s where Northeast Kingdom Organizing set up its own resource center and communication hub within days of the flooding. 

NEKO was born out of a collaboration among regional churches, the Caledonia Grange and the Center for Agricultural Economy in Hardwick, starting in 2017. The Orleans church was not one of the original organizations, but supporting the mutual aid group’s mission by opening up its space is an outgrowth of faith, said minister Alyssa May.

The group has been building relationships with people in the most affected communities for more than four years, said Ally Howell, who works for the agricultural nonprofit and is part of the NEKO leadership team. 

“We were positioned really well to respond quickly in Barton and Glover and Orleans,” Howell said. 

They began checking in with the families they knew as soon as roads were passable, and are trying to be in continuous touch and to understand their goals and needs, said Wayland, who is NEKO’s lead organizer and its primary eyes and ears on the ground. 

“It may not look devastating. The pictures are not catastrophic,” they said on Thursday afternoon. “But we live in a region where people have already been on a tightrope. These people are living in low-lying areas and they have been clobbered by this thing.”

‘A delicate dance’

In Hardwick, the leaders of The Civic Standard, a nonprofit operating out of the former Hardwick Gazette building in the village, have been doing similar things. They mobilized volunteers to staff an emergency shelter that opened afternoon June 10, the first night of flooding there. 

They also say the work is made possible by the presence The Civic Standard has been building in town for over a year. The group’s purpose, as described by co-founder Tara Reese, is simple but profound: “for people to be seen, to no longer be invisible to each other because of their differences,” she said. 

A resource center, set up by The Civic Standard and the Hardwick Neighbor to Neighbor group, opened on the following Monday at the Hardwick Senior Center. By Wednesday morning, it had already given out all its dehumidifiers and more than 30 fans, and provided other kinds of support to 20 families, said volunteer Sarah Behrsing, who was staffing it then.

“It’s something we’ve been building on all the time anyway,” said co-founder Rose Friedman. The organization wasn’t founded to respond to a disaster, but it is able to fill that role because of connections it has made. Supporting a community is varied. “Sometimes that looks like disaster relief and sometimes it looks like trivia (night),” she said. 

Other, older nonprofits are also playing a role. Thompson, the Greensboro Bend shopkeeper, said the Greensboro Association has provided funds for immediate assistance to local families. One family might need nights in a hotel; another one, help with material disposal. 

“Going to the garbage is not cheap,” she said. “It’s definitely heartbreaking to see families who don’t have the means and resources.” 

Having Wayland and other NEKO staff on the ground in affected communities has been invaluable in helping the state and regional groups understand community needs, said NEKCA’s Winterson. “They have been huge in that regard,” he said. 

Mitchell said that, because of Wayland’s work, he is trying to coordinate deliveries to specific households by the Salvation Army’s van while it is in Barton. 

NEKO is currently trying to bring materials and volunteers, while respecting residents’ wishes, to seven locations — and more are being added as they are found, Wayland said. The greatest need right now for the group are people in the trades and restoration professions who can help residents evaluate what is salvageable and what is not, they said. 

“We need people who have done this before. We can’t order the dumpsters and leave people to coordinate the volunteers,” Wayland said. “We have a relationship; we don’t have the expertise.” 

The Civic Standard group is working at three locations currently and matching volunteers at a few other locations, said Friedman on Thursday. It already has sufficient volunteers connected currently, and the work is not about ripping and tearing. 

“People are still living in these houses and have a life in them and a lot of attachment to the things in them,” Reese said. At the Gazette building, they are also providing a quiet place where people can come to sit and talk. 

Both NEKO and The Civic Standard know that they cannot solve every problem many of these households face. They can’t even make sure this doesn’t happen again. 

“We can’t lift these houses out of a floodplain,” said Hardwick resident Helen Sherr, a summer fellow with The Civic Standard.

But people active in those organizations, as well as town officials, hope this long-term and difficult work —- which Friedman calls a “delicate dance” — will allow information and assistance to come more easily next time. 

“I love these people. I grew up here. I want to help them look to the future,” Barton’s Atwood said. “I’m not naive enough to think this is the only time we are going to see this kind of water.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In rural Vermont, reaching residents with flood damage takes a village.

Thieves have reportedly struck the movie set of “Beetlejuice 2” in East Corinth, making off with two large props.

Film crews have been in the town in recent days as they make a follow-up to the 1988 “Beetlejuice” movie. In the late 1980s, production crews also were in East Corinth to shoot the original “Beetlejuice” film.

Director Tim Burton and his crew reportedly had one sequence left to film in Vermont when it wrapped July 13 as a result of the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike, according to Seven Days.

State police received a report Friday at 12:35 a.m. that someone had driven a pickup truck to a large lamppost on Village Road, which had a distinctive pumpkin decoration on top, according to a state police release. 

The person removed the lamppost from its base, put it into the back of the truck — reported to be an older-model GMC pickup with unknown license plates — and covered it with a tarp, the release stated. The vehicle then sped quickly away, according to the release. 

Then, the release stated, at around 4 p.m. on Monday, movie officials reported that thieves had stolen a roughly 150-pound abstract art statue from the area of a cemetery. That theft is believed to have occurred between Thursday, July 13, at 5 p.m. and Monday at 11 a.m.

Adam Silverman, a state police spokesperson, said Thursday that he didn’t have a more exact location of the cemetery.

“It came in essentially as the perpetrators’ vehicle had parked in the vicinity of the cemetery and had walked to the vicinity of where the sculpture was, but we don’t have any more specifics than that,” he said.  

Silverman said state police have reached out to movie officials to get an estimated value of the thefts.

He also said the items could appear online on movie memorabilia collectors’ sites, seeking buyers. 

“Certainly we encourage people to keep their eyes out,” Silverman said. “By putting it out to the public, we hope to generate some leads.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Police probe thefts of large props from set of ‘Beetlejuice 2’ in East Corinth.

The good news: Last week’s statewide storm was no match for Vermont’s “Great Flood of 1927,” a 36-hour downpour that economists estimate would have damaged up to $4 billion in property today.

And the bad: Although officials are still tallying the impact of the most recent deluge, the collective cost could rival 2011’s Tropical Storm Irene — and be a sign of things to come, according to a just-released national study.

“Make no mistake, the devastation and flooding we’re experiencing across Vermont is historic and catastrophic,” Gov. Phil Scott said last week of water that resulted in one confirmed fatality as well as road and business closures from Albany, Barton and Craftsbury in the Northeast Kingdom to Wardsboro, Weathersfield and Weston in southern Vermont.

Many Vermonters may judge the present destruction against that of past natural disasters. The Flood of 1927 remains the worst, having killed 84 people, while Irene claimed seven lives, state records show. But experts fear the toll of future storms could be worse.

A newly published study by national researchers at the nonpartisan, nonprofit First Street Foundation has found the number of Vermont properties at flood risk is three times as many as what the Federal Emergency Management Agency considers the figure to be for 1-in-100-year events.

In the state capital of Montpelier and surrounding Washington County, for example, formerly once-a-century floods are now considered to be 1-in-62-year events, the foundation is set to report on its website Risk Factor. The study also raises the region’s total of high-risk properties from 1,400 as categorized federally to more than 4,700.

“In environmental engineering, there is a concept called stationarity, which assumes that today is going to be like yesterday, and tomorrow is going to be like yesterday,” Dr. Ed Kearns, the foundation’s chief data officer, said in a statement. “This concept used to work, but with a changing environment it’s a poor assumption and no longer does.”

1927: ‘The greatest catastrophe’

Then again, yesterday shattered precedent, too. The year 1927 is remembered for such advances as the first talking motion picture, first Model A automobile and first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic — all while Vermont maintained fewer than 100 miles of asphalt roads, with the rest being dirt or gravel under local control.

“The rational Vermonter has been of the opinion that hard roads would ruin the state,” a Chicago Tribune reporter wrote in 1928 of the reluctance to pave the way for outsiders to roll in.

That spelled mud when up to 15 inches of rain fell for 36 hours Nov. 2-4, 1927, the late historians Deborah Pickman Clifford and Nicholas Clifford detail in their 2007 book “The Troubled Roar of the Waters’: Vermont in Flood and Recovery, 1927-1931.”

The storm, deemed “the greatest catastrophe in Vermont’s history” by then-Gov. John Weeks, destroyed 1,258 bridges and countless more miles of road and rails, state records show. That slowed or stopped delivery of food and other household essentials and forced farmers to churn whatever milk they couldn’t ship or store into butter, as only 30 percent had electricity before the storm, let alone refrigeration.

Three Massachusetts travelers, trying to drive to Burlington, stopped in Montpelier to ask directions, period newspapers recounted. The man they met told them it would take two weeks.

“Do you live here?” one of the tourists was quoted in the press.

“I guess I do — I am the governor,” Weeks reportedly replied, spurring the travelers to abandon their car and walk 40 miles from the capital to the state’s largest city. 

They weren’t alone. Historians recall how an Army captain had to ride a horse from Colchester’s Fort Ethan Allen over Smugglers Notch to offer the military’s help to Montpelier, while a Central Vermont Railway brakeman walked, waded and swam 50 miles to Essex Junction to report train troubles in Bethel.

Few complained. When then-U.S. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover surveyed Vermont on behalf of then-President Calvin Coolidge, Hoover’s car had to stop in Waterbury because of muddy roads.

“We have nothing left,” one local was said to have told Hoover, “but plenty of courage.”

Long before the creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a special session of the 1927 Legislature approved what was then an $8.5 million bond issue to not only repair but also improve roads.

“There was no point in simply restoring roads that would once again be vulnerable to catastrophe, that even before the flood had already been inadequate, and whose maintenance costs would be greater than if they were rebuilt in a more durable form,” the Cliffords wrote in their book.

Vermont would spend what was then $12 million on highways (including a then-unprecedented $2.6 million federal grant) the first two of four years of rebuilding, state records show. The governor, using the disaster to overturn a tradition of one-term officeholders, ran for reelection in 1928 and persuaded the Legislature to approve another 125 miles of “hard road.” 

The state’s current highway system was born.

2011: ‘Irene was just the appetizer …’

Vermont faced its second biggest test on Aug. 28, 2011, when Tropical Storm Irene crumbled more than 500 miles of highway, closing such north-south arteries as Route 100 — the state’s longest — and east-west corridors including Route 9 linking Bennington and Brattleboro, and Route 4 connecting Rutland and White River Junction.

Irene’s statistics, though not as steep as those in 1927, nonetheless were staggering. The 2011 storm dumped up to 11 inches of rain, destroyed nearly $750 million in property (a figure equal to almost two-thirds of that year’s state general fund budget) and damaged 200 bridges, 450 utility poles, 600 historic buildings, 1,000 culverts, 2,400 road segments, 3,500 homes and 20,000 acres of farmland.

In Danby, Irene washed away the old home of the late Nobel Prize-winning writer Pearl Buck just hours after the town christened its new artifact-filled historical society. Rockingham watched the water carry off its nearly 150-year-old Bartonsville Covered Bridge — an act captured and replayed on YouTube a half-million times.

Most expensively, Irene gutted the 1,500-employee Waterbury State Office Complex — ironically, the home of Vermont Emergency Management. Crews spent $130 million to restore the campus (with all occupied space now a half-foot above the 500-year flood mark) in the state government’s biggest-ever construction project.

Just as the 1927 flood spurred the state to modernize its infrastructure, Irene sparked more government changes. Many cities and towns bought out property owners in flood zones to avert future problems, while the state built stronger roads and bridges, updated its laws so planning addresses resilience and river corridor protection, and launched a Flood Ready Vermont website to educate the public about its programs. 

“When the flooding comes, no one can stop that, but there’s work we can do to be ready for the next thing,” Neale Lunderville, the state’s former Irene recovery officer who’s now head of Vermont Gas Systems, said on the storm’s 10th anniversary in 2021. “Irene was just the appetizer for the main course that’s yet to come if we don’t buckle down and start making changes.”

2023: ‘Historical data no longer capture the threats’

The most recent storm dropped as much as an average two months of rain, with a state high of 9.2 inches in Calais, according to the National Weather Service. But infrastructure improvements after Irene lessened damage to transportation and utility lines.

The Vermont Agency of Transportation, which required four months to repair more than 500 miles of highway ravaged in 2011, already has reopened 90% of the 100 state roads closed by last week’s storm, the agency has reported.

Green Mountain Power, which provides electricity to three-quarters of the state, reported 140,650 total outages during Irene, compared to 52,500 during this month’s storm.

Even so, the most recent flooding has sparked coast-to-coast headlines. Reporters have quoted scientists who blame saturated ground, mountains that channel water into river valleys — and climate change.

“As temperatures rise, the air can hold more moisture, which can mean more severe rainfall, bringing worse flooding,” The New York Times summed up the situation.

But many current models don’t account for such shifts. The National Weather Service bases its predictions for extreme rainfall more on past observations. Likewise, the new research from the First Street Foundation estimates the number of properties at flood risk is significantly larger than what FEMA says.

This month’s Vermont storm has turned the latter study’s release into national news.

“Historic flooding,” The Washington Post wrote in connecting the research to current events, “was not a product of any tropical system — laying bare how flooding predictions based on historical data no longer capture the threats posed by extreme rainfall as the planet warms and the air carries more moisture.”

The latest storm also has highlighted the need for continued investment in long-term planning.

“I have seen an increase in records being broken, records that have stood for decades or even a century,” U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., told reporters last week. “We really need to start to better understand what it’s going to look like 10 or 20 years from now, so we can use our mitigation dollars to help reduce those impacts and help these systems be more resilient.”

Disclosure: Neale Lunderville is a board member of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization of VTDigger.

Read the story on VTDigger here: How will the ‘Flood of 2023’ rank in history — and does it foretell the future?.

E.B. Flory’s voice broke several times on Friday describing how exceptional dedication in different parts of the dairy supply chain kept milk losses to a minimum this week.

Despite catastrophic flooding and road damage across the state, most of what Vermont’s farmers and their herds produced made it to a processing facility, the dairy section chief at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets said, even if it was not their usual one.

“Our cows, goats and sheep in the state, they don’t stop milking, and we have to get that milk, we have to get where it needs to be to be processed,” she said. “This has been a very stressful week, but we’ve had a lot of unexpected things come together that made things work in a successful way.”

The amount of milk that farmers and processors have had to dump was much less than everyone feared on Monday, agency Secretary Anson Tebbetts said during a press event on Friday. There also had been no reports of large-scale loss of livestock to flooding, he said.

Milk buyers within Vermont and in other states did not expect to see the volume of milk that arrived after news of the deluge and its aftermath had spread, Flory said. But from the farmers to the milk haulers to staff at processing plants and her own staff, many people worked around the clock to save the majority of the supply.

“We really only had a handful of instances where milk couldn’t get picked up because farms were inaccessible,” said Amber Sheridan, spokesperson for Cabot Creamery and the Agri-mark dairy cooperative. “It was really a small volume, given the magnitude of flooding.”

Flory and Sheridan gave milk hauling companies and their drivers a great deal of credit for that. 

With main state routes blocked, it took much longer for haulers to drive their regular routes, and more trucks and drivers had to be brought in quickly. Haulers and their dispatchers, who Flory compared to air traffic controllers, worked long hours and communicated frequently about which routes were creating the greatest difficulties. Flory said she was able to communicate those locations directly to the Agency of Transportation, which put them onto the priority list. 

For Agri-mark and Cabot, the biggest challenge was the closure of Route 2, which largely reopened Thursday afternoon, Sheridan said. When a truck could not reach the Cabot processing plant, the driver would be rerouted to Middlebury, or, when Interstate 89 closed on Monday, down to a plant in West Springfield, Massachusetts, so the milk cargo would not be wasted. 

In the background, there were the new larger, more energy-efficient bulk tanks that many farmers across the state were able to buy as part of a federal grant through the Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center, based at the state agency. Farms that had upgraded were able to keep milk cool between pickups for three days, rather than two. 

“That was a really big deal,” Flory said. “They made a difference.”

An emergency waiver from the Food and Drug Administration allowed processors a bit more leeway in how long they could hold milk before dumping as well. Product testing still ensured consumer safety, she said.

Beyond that, it was all about the people. 

“It’s been all hands on deck with many different sectors trying to get this done,” Flory said. 

Haulers were incredibly dedicated, creatively trying to get to farms in whatever way possible, she said. “They had their own crises at home, you know. Their basements were flooded, and they were on the road getting the milk,” Flory said. 

And it wasn’t just drivers. In the Northeast Kingdom, agency milk inspector Eric Perkins decided he would help them, going ahead in his car to the next farm to scout the best route to avoid backups and turnarounds. That initiative was so successful that the state’s other inspectors adopted the practice in the other corners of the state. 

“He stepped up and did something really innovative that we’ve never done before, and it really worked,” Flory said. 

Evaluating flooded crops and fields

While damaged roads were the immediate crisis to overcome, they are becoming more passable by the day. Now farmers are turning to evaluating flooded crops, hayfields and stored bales to determine how much damage the rains caused to what their livestock needs to eat. 

“In our hilly state, some of our most fertile farmland lies in the river valleys,” Tebbetts said at the Friday morning event. Across Vermont, “countless fields of corn, hay, vegetables, fruit and pasture were swamped and buried,” he said.

Heather Darby, an agronomist with the University of Vermont Extension service, is visiting many of them. On Friday, she traveled from Swanton to Hardwick by car to lend her expert eye. She helped write two different informational sheets for farmers on flooded corn and flooded forage.

So far she has been pleased to see that most of the corn and soybean fields she has examined appear likely to recover. Unlike Tropical Storm Irene, which occurred in late summer, those crops are younger and should regrow and bounce back. 

“Corn does have the ability to sort of stand itself back up, so it’s really a watch-and-see game for a lot of the fields right now,” Darby said. 

Hayfields are another story. They are her biggest concern right now. 

Most farmers had been waiting to take the second or third cut of this year’s hay until after the latest bout of rain. Where a field was flooded, that entire cutting is lost. 

“They’ve got to chop it off and get it off the field so that those grasses can regrow,” Darby said. 

If farmers want to try to save it, the crop should be stored separately from non-flooded silage and tested repeatedly for bacteria and toxins produced by fungus or mold. 

At the farm she was headed to in Hardwick, flooded by the Lamoille River, even that may not be possible. 

“The fields have so much debris on them, and there is so much silt on the fields, so we are not sure if the grass will die,” she said. She is going to try to advise the owners on whether they need to replant entirely. 

For bales and other stored silage that got wet, the future is questionable. Some may be usable, but also need to be repeatedly tested. If hay was fully submerged for several days, it’s unlikely that it is safe for animals to eat, even if wrapped, Darby said. 

Jane Clifford, who runs an eighth-generation dairy farm in Starksboro with her husband, said her farm was spared, but she has close friends in the region who had hundreds of active acres underwater. 

While the losses are large, and dairy farming has unique challenges, farmers are aware they are just one of many small businesses who are reeling right now, she said. 

“It’s frustrating. It’s hard. But for those of us in the industry, it’s a business,” Clifford said. “I look at all the businesses in downtown Montpelier or Barre that were impacted. I look at it that we are all kind of in the same boat.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s dairy industry saved majority of milk supply during catastrophic storm.

On Tuesday morning, Vermont Language Justice Project released a series of informational videos about flood safety in 16 languages, including Maay Maay, a primarily oral language spoken in Somalia. 

The video was independently produced with local interpreters, using grant funding the organization received last year from the Department of Health. It was subsequently shared by state agencies including Vermont Emergency Management.

But Alison Segar, the language project’s director, argued the effort left too many Vermonters behind the curve in an emergency. An estimated 8,000 Vermonters’ primary language is not English and more than 30 languages are spoken in the state, according to state and federal data, including among growing immigrant and refugee communities from Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Concerns about the forecast grew over the weekend, heavy rainfall began pelting the state on Sunday night and Vermonters awoke to dangerous conditions on Monday.

“When it comes to emergency management, I feel like we’re always one step behind,” Segar said on Tuesday.

The video series was not commissioned by any state agency, she said, but rather a community effort that was turned around in 24 hours in response to the severe flooding. 

“We could have been proactive as opposed to reactive,” she said. “We’re a day behind.”

Segar noted with optimism that the Vermont Emergency Management website has flood-related advice available in nine languages, and acknowledged the high cost of translation work. But she wondered how many people were able to even navigate to the website to access that information, given disparate levels of internet access and other barriers.

Some languages are oral rather than written and some people are not literate in their languages, she added. 

“I think that’s a really good start,” she said. “But it really doesn’t address the problem.”

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 1.3% of Vermont’s population, or some 7,700 people, speak English less than “very well.” That figure doesn’t account for refugee resettlement in the fiscal year of 2022, which totaled 387 people, according to the State Refugee Office. 

In a statement to VTDigger on Tuesday, Vermont Emergency Management said it “has been working on enhancing our ability to communicate with non-English speakers for some time and it continues to be a high priority for us.” The agency highlighted the Vermont Language Justice Project videos, as well as an emergency preparedness workbook on its website. Available translations vary by topic and range between nine and 15 languages, including Burmese, Dari, Kiswahili and Russian.

As officials move into recovery efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will have translated materials and “backup interpreters” available, the state agency said. 

“(Vermont Emergency Management) has a contractor that does our translations, and we plan to add more information and languages,” the agency said in its statement. “The turnaround time is not sufficient to translate emergency messages in a timely manner during an event, so we do all we can to educate everyone ahead of time.”

Ahead of the rainfall, the Department of Health said in a statement, staff had “emailed some of our materials to their list of health equity partners, including those who work with non-English speaking populations.” The department said that it continually updates multilingual resources on its website. 

‘People need to know’

The dearth of translated materials has made access to information insufficient for thousands of Vermonters in this emergency — and other potential rapid-onset disasters like a chemical spill, said Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast District, in an interview. 

Under federal law, federal agencies are required to implement a system so that people who speak other languages can still have “meaningful access” to their services. 

“People need to know about shelters, evacuations and road closures,” Ram Hinsdale said. 

She noted that interpreter services are available when dialing 211 and 511. She also pointed to the Department of Health website, which offers flood safety tips in 14 languages. 

But, “it’s static,” she said. “It’s not any kind of information about what’s happening right now.” 

The state’s Office of Racial Equity issued a language access report at the start of this year, outlining the various gaps, including that most of the state’s emergency communications are not available in any language other than English and “are seldom translated into (American Sign Language) or other signed languages.” 

The state senator said she has pushed for a multilingual contract with Everbridge, the vendor that powers the state’s mass notification system VT Alerts. Alternatively, she said the state could liaise with community partners to get live emergency information relayed in Whatsapp groups that local Somali and Nepali communities already use. 

Some cities already have initiatives in place. Paul Sarne, a spokesperson for the City of Winooski, said in a statement that a city staffer had been in communication with multilingual residents through the texting app Whatsapp.

“The state has been working on their own language access plans, but I’ve been (saying) you need an emergency language access plan,” Ram Hinsdale said, arguing that the state should have kept the Vermont Language Justice Project “on retainer for this moment.” 

Xusana Davis, the state’s executive director of racial equity, said that in addition to at least 34 languages spoken in Vermont, there are at least 70,000 people in the state who are affected by hearing loss. The conversation around language access is “inextricably linked to disability rights and accessibility in the state,” she said.  

In what Davis called “a milestone,” the state budget, which was approved in May, carved out $2.3 million for translating existing vital documents and $700,000 in maintenance and ad hoc needs. But when producing translated content in a time-sensitive manner, there are myriad technical considerations. 

The urgency of translated emergency communications is not lost on Davis. 

“For those of us who come from immigrant families,” she said, “this has been a struggle and a challenge and a fear for all of our lives in the states.” 

‘Not a single alert in any other language’

Organizations who serve communities on the ground said they understand the challenges of providing translation services. 

But this is “life-saving information,” said Amila Merdzanovic, director of the Vermont field office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. 

“All the alerts were sent out in English,” she said. “Not a single alert was sent in any other language.” 

Merzdanovic was encouraged by the close cooperation of the state with community groups during the pandemic and said that with “continued dialogue and coordination … progress follows.” 

​​Merzdanovic and two other leaders in immigrant communities — Will Lambek, of Migrant Justice in Burlington, and Joe Wiah, director of the Ethiopian Community Development Council in Brattleboro — said their teams are in contact with their members to ensure proper guidance if anyone is affected by the severe rainfall. 

“We always put it this way: We’re building this ship as we go,” Wiah said. “The state and other providers have really stepped up; it’s just we all collectively haven’t gotten there yet.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, Vermont Language Justice Project’s website had received at least 2,800 views in the prior 48 hours, a substantial jump from its daily average of 150 views. Segar pointed to those numbers as reassuring evidence that their videos are reaching their intended audience. Her team is now working on a video series about contaminated drinking water. 

“We’re just doing what we think is the right thing to do,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Advocates bemoan ‘not a single alert in any other language’ at flooding’s outset.

VTDigger reporters and photographers captured scenes in the flooded capital on Tuesday, as many waited anxiously for news of whether floodwaters would recede, or whether Wrightsville Dam would pass its capacity and send more water into the city.

Click on any of the smaller photos below to enlarge. View our photos from around the state on Monday, submit your own photos and videos and follow our latest coverage.

Read the story on VTDigger here: PHOTOS: Vermont’s capital under floodwaters.

At Northern Stage in White River Junction, crew members look at the weather forecast every morning to figure out if, between heat and rain, they will be able to work outside. The outdoor stage first built to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic has become a permanent part of the setup. 

When a reporter visited, the crew was busy setting it all up for the opening of “Sense and Sensibility,” the play the company is performing until July 9. All the sets were built in house, but that may not happen again. For the next play, “Twelfth Night,” which opens Aug. 1, half the sets are being built on site and half are being built a three-hour drive away by Upstate Scenic, a company in Chatham, New York, that constructs sets for theater and film. 

Next season, the theater company will work with the contractor to figure out what makes sense to build on site and what makes sense to contract out. 

The company experimented with this approach in March, with its production of “Sweat,” and “it went extraordinarily well,” said Jason Smoller, Northern Stage’s managing director.

Northern Stage decided to outsource its set construction because space is tight and staff is hard to find, said Brian Sekinger, director of production. Upstate Scenic also works with Weston Theater Company and other local companies, he said

A lot of people, particularly in set construction, “pivoted to other careers”  during the pandemic, Sekinger said. “They either went into more industrial construction or building houses or just sort of left and did something totally different.”

Set construction is just one of the ways that theater companies across Vermont have adapted in permanent ways to changes imposed by the pandemic. They have outsourced the work on sets, let theatergoers pick their ticket prices, and performed more outdoors in summer as they try to regain audiences that have yet to return to pre-pandemic numbers.

“The pandemic isn’t over,” said Cristina Alicea, managing creative director of Vermont Stage, which is based in Burlington but also produces a summer outdoor play at Isham Farm in Williston. “We’re still dealing with audiences not fully back yet.”

Reconstructing career pathways

Like Northern Stage, other companies have moved outdoors in summer. 

Lyric Theatre Company in South Burlington adapted to outdoor plays for young audiences during the pandemic, and those have become part of the company’s regular programming, said Erin Evarts, the company’s executive director. In June, the company performed outside at three public libraries and at the Shelburne Museum.

Weston Theater Company also took its programming for children outside in 2021, and never went back. And, the company is also performing those plays in towns beyond its home. 

“It’s now a free tour for audiences all over southern Vermont,” said Susanna Gellert, the company’s executive artistic director. The troupe perform for free outdoors in Grafton, Brownsville, Springfield and Rutland, transforming a show that used to reach about 800 people to one that reaches more than 4,000.

But the workers employed in the field of building those sets are fewer and farther between.

Sekinger said that, nationwide, about 30% of theater technicians went into other careers during the pandemic. 

“So we’ve been starting to rebuild,” he said. “There just aren’t the same number of people that there were before.”

Early-career professionals, Sekinger said, did not get the same hands-on experience in college during the pandemic they would have before. For instance, they were not able to produce in person, on stage, because so much theater was on Zoom.

Between the shortage of experienced people and the lack of experience of new people, he said, the alternative to contracting work out would be to have staff members work 60 to 80 hours a week.

Full houses

The housing shortage is another factor leading to a dearth of technical professionals, Sekinger said. To alleviate housing costs for its employees, Northern Stage has bought some properties in the area and leased others, he said. 

“During the pandemic, everybody moved up from New York, bought up all the housing and sort of stayed, which means there isn’t as much housing in the area for new people coming into the organization,” he said.

Smoller concurs: “It is becoming increasingly difficult to hire. It all comes down to housing.”

Weston Theater has taken another direction toward lowering housing costs for members of the company, at least in summer. It has formed a partnership with a company that in winter houses staff at Okemo Mountain Resort in Ludlow. That housing was not being used in summer, so Weston Theater is renting it. 

While outsourcing set construction, Sekinger said Northern Stage retains creative control over those sets.

“We just send them drawings and paint renderings and research images and say: ‘This is how we want it to look,’” he said. “And then it just shows up here.”

Josh Davis, Northern Stage’s technical director, goes to the shop in New York to make sure that it is building what was drawn, and to answer questions.

“And making sure that if they’re supposed to be painting something blue and we’re building something blue and those blue things touch each other, then it’s the same color blue,” Sekinger said. 

Material differences

It’s a pretty significant shift in the industry right now, Sekinger said, for small regional theaters to acknowledge they cannot staff up the way they would pre-pandemic. 

Sekinger said Northern Stage is adapting in other ways because materials are hard to get or cost more than they used to. He points to the painted plywood made to look like tiles on the floor of the outdoor stage set.

“We do a lot of painting wood to look like other other materials because it’s cheaper or easier to get wood than it is to get some of those other materials,” he said.

Another adaptation, Smoller said, is that Northern Stage is paying closer attention to what its audience wants. That change came about after the company staged “Spring Awakening” last year. The musical is about loss of innocence, abortion and teenage suicide.

“And the feedback we heard from people was it is just too difficult and too sad for this moment,” Smoller said. “So we thought oh, no, we can’t do sad plays anymore.”

Smoller said the company’s artistic director, Carol Dunne, considered pulling the next play, “Sweat,” but the company, proud to put the play on, decided to go ahead. The play deals with hard social issues, such as loss of jobs, poverty and addiction.

“This play deals with real issues, too,” said Smoller. “It is not about teen suicide, which is very difficult to grapple with.”

Smoller said it was universally well received. 

“Our audiences loved it,” he said. “So many folks told us: ‘That is the best thing I have seen at Northern Stage.’”

The response reaffirmed that the company’s audiences still want challenging theater.

“They don’t want sad theater, necessarily, but it’s not that they just want to see ‘The Little Mermaid’ or ‘A Christmas Carol’ again,” Smoller said. “So what has changed for us permanently is we are really conscious of what people are looking for, and the season we are offering next season doesn’t have any ‘sad’ titles.”

That said, Smoller said, some people do want “A Christmas Carol,” and Northern Stage will offer a new adaptation of the play this year. 

A push toward youth

If the pandemic led adults to avoid depressing plays, Smoller said young people are just looking for more in-person connection and belonging after years on Zoom, and so he is seeing increasing interest in the company’s intensive youth ensemble studios. 

The studios offer students an opportunity to learn on the stage of a professional theater company, with professional actors, designers and directors. 

In addition, he said, high school students are looking for inclusivity and belonging, and are drawn to theater by virtue of the fact that it is not closely associated with a particular gender.

“We don’t run a men’s lacrosse team,” he said. ”Even in high school, students who are grappling with their identity have to choose: ‘OK, if I’m going to be on the swim team, it’s the boys’ swim team or the girls’ swim team.’ And theater isn’t that. You never have to opt into one or the other.”

Teens tell him they find an inclusive place at Northern Stage, he said.

What does a ticket cost?

Another change brought about by the pandemic: Audiences are buying tickets at the last minute, said Evarts, at the Lyric Theater. She said the national trend is that tickets are being bought in the last week to 10 days before a show, and the Lyric is finding that, as well.

Alicea said Vermont Stage also contends with waiting for last-minute ticket purchases. 

Last year, Weston Theater brought in another big change. Having trouble persuading people to buy subscriptions, it started letting patrons pick the price they want to pay for one. The company offered three prices for exactly the same seats. As a result, Gellert said, subscriptions doubled last year, and this year, the company had already sold more subscriptions before the season started than it did during the entire year last year.

This year, Weston Theater is also letting people pay what they will for previews — performances before a show is reviewed. 

“You can choose to pay zero,” said Gellert. 

Last year, Vermont Stage found that subscriptions dropped by half, and “I’m finding that a lot of people are still hesitant to sign up for a full year,” said Alicea. She believes the experience of the pandemic is leading people to wait and see before making long-term commitments.

“My hope is that people don’t wait and see too long, because it could spell trouble for our organization and others,” said Alicea. 

This year, Vermont Stage, too, is letting people pay what they will for both subscriptions and individual performances. The company is letting patrons pay one of three prices — $24, $44 or $64 — for a general admission ticket. If people pay $64, they are helping to subsidize the people who pay $24, said Alicea. 

The company also offers three prices for subscriptions, with the same number of shows for each and also for general admission: $89, $149 and $209.

Based on early sales of subscriptions, most people are paying $149, Alicea said, which is what she assumed would happen. But the company thought the second-largest group would be people who paid $89, and that has not turned out to be the case. Instead, more people are buying at the $209 price, a sign that patrons want to support the organization, she said. 

“They’re definitely showing up for us in that way,” Alicea said. “It’s deeply appreciated.”

Alicea said she was inspired to offer the pick-your-price model by Andy Butterfield, the marketing director at Weston Theater. Sharing information about what works is how theater companies hope to rebuild their field, she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: The Covid-19 pandemic has brought lasting changes to Vermont’s theater companies.

Defying the predictions of abortion advocates, providers and state lawmakers, the number of out-of-state patients who traveled to Vermont to obtain abortions did not increase, but in fact dropped, in the year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade case precedent, according to preliminary data from the state Department of Health.

When the court’s conservative majority issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last June, the country became a patchwork of disparate reproductive health laws. In states with so-called trigger laws, abortion was severely restricted or outright banned once the decision was issued. Other state legislatures, emboldened by the court ruling, worked quickly to impose new restrictions on the procedure in their respective states.

Vermont lawmakers had seen a post-Roe future coming, and proactively worked to expand access to abortion within Vermont’s boundaries — not only with Vermonters in mind, but also for out-of-state patients who they foresaw traveling from their respective states to obtain the procedure.

Experts never expected a tsunami of out-of-state patients, largely because Vermont is a remote, rural state that can be difficult or cost-prohibitive to travel to from far distances. When the high court issued its Dobbs decision, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England predicted a modest 10% increase in out-of-state patients.

But according to preliminary data that VTDigger requested from the Vermont Department of Health, even that didn’t come to pass. As of this week, the department reports that from June 24, 2022 — the day of the Dobbs decision — through early June 2023, a total of 925 abortions were completed in Vermont. Of those, 154 were performed on non-Vermont residents — roughly 17%. (Due to reporting lag time, the department was unable to provide data from the latter portion of June 2023.)

By comparison, in all of 2021, 215 out-of-state patients obtained abortions in Vermont, representing nearly 21% of the 1,033 abortions completed in the state that year.

Since 2018, the proportion of out-of-state patients who obtain abortions in Vermont has remained relatively stable, hovering between 17 and 22% every year. But mirroring national trends, the total number of abortion patients in the state — both those who hail from Vermont and those who don’t — has trended downward.

In the year since Roe fell, a handful of patients traveled to Vermont from far-flung states where an abortion is difficult to obtain: Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas, to name a few. But most out-of-state patients traveled from nearby states, where access to abortion is, in theory, about on par with Vermont: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island. More than half of all out-of-state patients came from New Hampshire, mirroring past years’ trends.

Vermont’s clinics had anticipated such a trend, according to Lucy Leriche, vice president of Vermont public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. “There are a lot of reasons why people from out-of-state are getting an abortion in our region,” she said, speaking of Vermont as well as New Hampshire and Maine.

Sometimes northern New England is where the patient has a family member or support system to assist in the process, Leriche said. Perhaps they are fleeing a domestic violence situation. They could be attending college here, but a legal resident elsewhere. Maybe they just want more privacy. Or perhaps, if they hail from a nearby state that has more patients, such as New York or Massachusetts, they couldn’t get an appointment at home. A domino effect in appointment availability can ensue, Leriche said.

Planned Parenthood — the largest provider of abortions in Vermont, and nationwide — declined to provide state-specific data on its own out-of-state patients, citing concerns over patient privacy and safety. But in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont combined, the organization earlier this month reported a 12.5% increase in out-of-state patients “seeking abortion at our health centers,” according to a June press release.

Beyond patient data, Leriche said the impact of the Dobbs decision was palpable in other ways. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England’s call center was “inundated” immediately after the ruling was made, she said. Online, the organization’s website had its largest one-day spike in web traffic on June 24, 2022, the day of the court’s ruling. “That is, I think, a really strong indicator of the response,” Leriche said.

The Dobbs decision “is very destabilizing and very anxiety-producing, and causes a lot of confusion and anxiety and fear and panic,” Leriche said.

Leriche said the organization is trying to keep its messaging on target, emphasizing that abortion remains legal in Vermont. This legislative session, state lawmakers passed landmark shield laws protecting Vermont-based abortion providers — and to some extent, patients who travel to the state — from out-of-state abortion prosecutions or investigations.

Read the story on VTDigger here: In the year after Roe fell, out-of-state abortion patients did not flock to Vermont.