There’s a fresh look to the Weston Trailer Park. The newly pressed gravel bases for the shiny new mobile homes – some of them still uninhabited – match the bright new wood of the porches. The porches don’t show the tell-tale signs of Vermont weather: the moss that gathers around the base of support posts, the faded gray tone that comes from intense summer sun, winter freezes, and heavy rains.
A year ago, the Weston Trailer Park was home to many families. Trailers of varying vintages lined the short dirt road in Berlin, their porches well-worn. Perhaps some of the families living in the park had heard of Irene, a tropical storm brewing down south. Most of them didn’t expect their neighborhood, the 83-lot trailer park, would be virtually wiped off the map.
When Tropical Storm Irene scoured Vermont, Weston was among the worst hit trailer parks in the state. Seventeen mobile home villages were damaged by Irene, including parks in Bethel, Duxbury, Waterbury, Sharon and Brattleboro, according to state officials. In all, 235 mobile homes flooded and 124 were actually destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Three parks have been closed indefinitely, including Tri Park in Brattleboro, Patterson’s in Duxbury and Whalley in Waterbury.
Weston was also devastated. Many of the mobile homes were ruined, forcing their inhabitants to look elsewhere for housing in the chaotic weeks after the storm hit.
But a year later, Weston is back, and in some ways better than it was before. The park looks as though it was recently carved out of the meadow on which it sits, not far from the Dog River that so ravaged it last year. Fresh concrete pads line both sides of the road, some of them underneath handsome new mobile homes, for sale signs standing squarely in front.
The Weston makeover is the result of a concerted effort by the Shumlin administration and nonprofit groups to help residents rebuild. The Vermont Community Foundation, the Associated General Contractors, Chittenden County Office of Employment Opportunity and Lt. Gov. Phil Scott stepped in to raise thousands of dollars to help mobile home owners across the state dispose of the 68 trailers that were destroyed by Irene last year and to raise money to help residents rebuild. In addition, the FEMA gave eligible owners (whose properties were condemned) up to $30,200 from the federal government.
On a recent afternoon, lawn crews are cutting grass around the park, though most of the lawns around the new homes haven’t been seeded yet. Most of the few residents are off at work, their freshly laid driveways empty. The occasional truck rumbles toward the end of the road, where a group is putting up a porch on one of the houses.
The contractors working on the porch aren’t toiling in the late summer heat to put food on the table, though. In fact, they paid their own way for the privilege of volunteering here.
The group of nine is from Hazlet, a suburban town in central New Jersey, near the shore. They drove up to Vermont as part of the United Methodist Church’s Volunteers in Mission program, a national volunteer network that helps impoverished or disaster-struck communities with volunteer building and home maintenance.
“We’re up here – as people move in, there’s different people coming in, different churches from around the country, but we’re up here this week working here in Weston and we’ve already put a deck on a trailer over in Montpelier,” said Bill Bechtoldt, one of the volunteers.
Some of the volunteers have a Vermont connection. Vic Rhodes, one of the older volunteers, was born in Pownal. Bechtoldt’s son owns the Stella Notte restaurant in Stowe. Others just came to help out.
“It’s just amazing how much damage water can do,” said Melanie Jacob, one of the group members.
They’re no stranger to water damage. After Hurricane Katrina devastated some southeastern communities, the church group went to Mississippi to volunteer. On this trip, the group is staying at the McKenzie house, an old church hall converted into a bunkhouse after Irene.
Dave Murphy and his wife Judy help coordinate the volunteer groups with local efforts. They started the central Vermont volunteer branch, or mission, in Feb. 2011 and initially had trouble finding volunteers from outside the state.
“And then all of the sudden Irene happened and we were on the map,” Murphy said. Since the storm hit, the Murphys have had 10 groups, and two more are likely to come before the end of the year.
“We’re with the United Methodist Church and we have a national network of groups called Volunteers in Mission,” Murphy said in an interview. The volunteer network was in place, and coordinating with community response groups across central Vermont, Murphy has connected groups with homeowners who need everything from hanging drywall and replacing windows to building wheelchair ramps.
“We have some funds, but most of them have been funded either through state money and also some money that’s been raised in the individual communities,” he said.
With the supplies paid for and free labor, the mission has been able to fill many gaps, doing projects for families that might not otherwise have been able to afford them. He says there’s much more to be done.
“We anticipate operating next year,” Murphy said. Some of this summer’s volunteers have already contacted him about making another trip next summer.
A fresh start
As the volunteers eat their lunch in the shade, a Vermont man stops by.
“I’m moving into 18,” he says proudly.
Twelve months after the storm, Clint Campbell is finally coming home. When Irene hit, he was living in his trailer at River Run in Barre. The trailer park had flooded in May 2011, and Campbell and his wife were hit again in August.
“I’d been there 13 years,” he said. The trailer was destroyed in Irene, and deemed uninhabitable by the state. Since then, he’s been renting an apartment in Plainfield.
Campbell, a groundskeeper at Thunder Road in Barre, said he was paying for the mobile home – just under $50,000 – with money from FEMA and a grant from the Central Vermont Community Action Council.
“It’s about time,” he said. “Rent was killing me.”
Campbell is one of the lucky ones. His last trailer was covered by flood insurance, and he and his wife made it through the storm unharmed.
Greg Rouleau, the owner of Villiage Homes, was there to help Campbell move in. He said there’s been a lot of activity in the year since Irene, and most of his customers are having trouble getting the money together to pay for their homes.
“Funding has been a struggle for everybody,” he said. “From what I understand is what FEMA gave in replacement cost and what it costs to rebuild and go in is a different number, so making up the difference is the challenge.”
