As floodwaters inundated Vermont on Monday, roughly three-dozen workers, each in color-coded vests signifying their roles, coordinated a multi-pronged response from the State Emergency Operations Center in Waterbury.
At around 1:15 p.m., the energy of the room was busy, but not frantic. Mark Bosma, a spokesperson for Vermont Emergency Management, said that activity in the response room “comes in waves.”
Meteorologists from the National Weather Service provided real-time updated forecasts to those in the room. Workers took on-the-ground reports from local emergency response teams and town officials. A member of the Vermont National Guard, dressed in fatigues, could deploy air resources or drinking water trucks with one “shout across the room,” Bosma said. Down the hall, a financial team kept an eye on the entire operation’s cost to the state.
Just outside the window, the Winooski River crept closer and closer to the building in the Waterbury State Office Complex, raising the possibility that the emergency operations center might need to be evacuated to one of several alternate locations — or go fully remote.
Julie Benedict, Vermont Emergency Management’s state exercise administrator, has worked in emergency response operations for 15 years — her career spanning both Tropical Storm Irene and the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the 12 years since Irene, she said, the state has worked on perfecting its emergency preparedness. The response to this storm, compared with Irene, has gone more smoothly so far, she said.
Storms like this week’s or Irene used to be considered once-in-lifetime events, but “it’s just not anymore,” Benedict said. Officials used to have months or even years to complete recovery efforts between storms, but that’s no longer the case. The next disaster comes more and more quickly.
Benedict pointed to the state Department of Health, which had not even completed its after-action report on the Covid-19 emergency before it had to respond to the monkeypox outbreak and the December winter storm that left hundreds of Vermonters without heat.
“It’s shorter now in between incidents,” Benedict said. “Every emergency manager is expecting things to be faster now.”
