A big yellow backhoe began demolishing homes at the Weston Mobile Home Park in Berlin Monday, marking a bittersweet sign of progress nine weeks after Tropical Storm Irene.
Some 433 mobile homes at 15 parks around the state suffered damage from the storm on Aug. 28, according to state officials, and dealing with their removal and disposal has proved a difficult task because many of the homeowners can’t afford the cost.
Monday, Lt. Gov Phil Scott and a host of state, nonprofit, private sector and community agency officials gathered at the Weston Mobile Home Park to mark a new step in a broad-based effort to resolve the situation. The 83-lot park suffered some of the state’s worst damage when the normally placid Dog River swamped the area along Route 12 just south of Montpelier.
“The good news is, we’ve started,” said Scott, standing on a muddy road surrounded by debris, dumpsters and mobile homes stripped to their 2×4 studs or half torn down. “We’ve had some struggles along the way, some challenges.”
Scott then announced a new challenge: Five of the 20 homes to be removed from the Berlin park, where 70 homes were destroyed or damaged, contained asbestos in the flooring, which will complicate their removal and raise the cost of the process.
The discovery will drive up the cost of removal, requiring another $60,000 for dealing with the asbestos and $40,000 for testing the remaining mobile homes that need to be disposed of, he said.
“The bad news is, we have to do some more fundraising,” said Scott, who owns a contracting company in Middlesex and with his close ties to the construction industry took on the task after Irene of organizing the removal process with Secretary of Commerce and Community Development Lawrence Miller.
Thanks to extensive fundraising that was kick-started by a $25,000 donation from Aubuchon Hardware, state officials have been able to bring the cost of removal down to zero for mobile home owners, many of whom did not have flood insurance and received small settlements from FEMA.
Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup, a philanthropic advisor for the Vermont Community Foundation, said $150,000 has been raised so far for the disposal plan and another $150,000 is needed. He said donations for the mobile home removal can be designated at www.vtfloodresponse.org.
According to Scott, mobile homes that have asbestos issues will cost another $1,500 to $2,000 each for remediation.
Officials originally estimated the cost to remove a mobile home at around $3.500 or more, Scott said, which many owners could not afford to pay. Creating economies of scale and using donated equipment and work brought the cost per unit down to around $1,500, but even that was too much for low-income residents at the parks.
“When we first started, we realized $1,500 to some people might as well be $15,000,” he said.
Mobile home owners also faced a Catch-22 situation of being charged rental starting in November for units they were no longer able to live in and could not afford to dispose of.
Scott said construction crews would work at Weston for an estimated two weeks and then take what they’ve learned from the process and apply it to other mobile homes parks around the state. He said 13 homes in Patterson’s Mobile Home Park in Duxbury and three in Woodstock were also scheduled for disposal under the program. Around 100 mobile homes are expected to be removed under the process, according to Scott.
“We’re looking forward to seeing it roll out in other parts of the state,” he said.
Shaun Gilpin, a mobile home advocate and organizer with Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity who has worked tirelessly to resolve the disposal issue, said the owner of the Weston park had agreed to not charge rent until Nov. 15 for those whose homes are scheduled for removal.
“The park owners are hurting too,” Gilpin said. While losing most of their lot rental income, they also face considerable expenses to restore and fix up their properties.
Watching amid the debris Monday were Glenn and Donna French, a retired couple whose home in the park was trashed in the flood. They were lucky to have flood insurance, they received help from a FEMA payment of $13,700, and they have found a place to live on Crosstown Road in Berlin — “up high,” Donna French jokes.
But she feels for her friends and neighbors whose lives and property were destroyed by Irene.
“It makes you sick,” she said.
While most residents have moved out of the mobile home park, Bernie Corliss is bucking the tide and is making progress in renovating his flooded home, which he said he can’t afford to abandon. Corliss, who was a mechanic until a bad back forced him to quit, is in the middle of extensive repairs to his 2006 mobile home and said he is hopeful he can finish work by Nov. 15, or at least Thanksgiving. He and his wife are living with a friend in Worcester, he said.
Corliss’ home was flooded less than many others in the park and he has had it gutted, replaced the floors and wet insulation and sheetrock, appliances and repaired the heating system with the help of many friends and volunteers.
Monday, he sat in a plastic lawn chair amidst construction materials in his house and said his back was still bothering him, but his mood was a lot better than when a reporter visited just a couple weeks after Irene swamped his home, forcing a harrowing rescue.
Unlike others, he discounts the chance the park could flood again, calling Irene a “freak” event.
“If it happens again, it happens again. We could live on a mountain and the house could burn down,” he said philosophically.
According to Corliss, he knows at least five others who plan to move back when lots become available for new mobile homes. But while he’s been able to work to restore his home, he can’t restore the neighborhood he’s lost, he said. Most of those who lived around him — some had been there more than 40 years — are gone and won’t be coming back.
“That’s the sad thing,” he said.