Backstory: In a Flooded Mobile Home Park, a Reporter Finds the ‘Most Gracious’ Strangers 

click to enlarge

• File: Colin Flanders ©️ Seven Days
• A resident taking a moment at a flooded home

This "backstory" is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2023.

I thought I was alone at the Berlin Mobile Home Park when a person called out from behind me. "You can come in and take photos, if you'd like!" Addie Wheeler yelled, leaning against the door to her sodden porch.

Thus began one of the more challenging yet fulfilling reporting stretches of my career.

I had driven to the mobile home park on July 12 after consulting a map and noting that its proximity to a nearby waterway may have put it in the crosshairs of the historic floods two days earlier. Unfortunately, I was right: All but one of the 30 homes had been severely damaged by floodwater.

Related In a Mobile Home Park Devastated by Flood, Shock, Sadness and Frustration Take Hold

In a Mobile Home Park Devastated by Flood, Shock, Sadness and Frustration Take Hold

By Colin Flanders

Housing Crisis

Residents were told to avoid the park until the owner cleared mud from the road. But Wheeler had come back anyway, desperate to collect whatever belongings she could salvage, including her 10-year-old son's baseball jersey; he had a game that night.

I spent the next three days at the park, forming a routine of sorts. I'd walk up and down the mud-covered, quarter-mile road and introduce myself to anyone I saw. Each time I expected to be told to kick rocks; these people had just lost their homes and most of their belongings. Instead, everyone agreed to speak with me and many brought me inside. A few even let me tag along as they surveyed the damage themselves for the first time.

Just as surprising was the near-universal insistence that their situation somehow could have been worse. Those with flood insurance expressed concern about neighbors without it. Those with family to stay with fretted over their elderly neighbors stuck in the emergency shelters. Here they were, in one of their darkest moments, thinking of others.

I have always marveled at the willingness of people to allow journalists into their lives — especially in moments of crisis. As my boots slipped on their muddy floors, I thought of the condo I had recently bought and how devastated I would feel had this happened to me. Would I have welcomed a stranger inside to witness my misfortune? I feared not.

The residents of Berlin Mobile Home Park did, and, because of it, we were able to document one of the more urgent stories to come out of the floods in a compelling and intimate way. For that, I'll always be grateful.