BARNET, Vt. (WCAX) – Many are spending another weekend helping their neighbors clean up the mess last week’s flooding in the Northeast Kingdom left.
“I think what drew me to team Rubicon, is. It’s about getting your hands dirty. Really getting in there, it’s the muck outs. Cleaning debris,” Denee Mackenzie of Team Rubicon said.
Denee Mackenzie is one of the many helping to clean out a house in Barnet that was flooded last week.
She said, when her town flooded last year, it took weeks to repair the damage.
And when she saw what happened in the Northeast Kingdom, she had to find a way to help, and Team Rubicon was the perfect fit.
“So this is actually my first deployment with them. Just happy to be here to help today. Especially where the home we are at today, they really just got island. Just being able to put people lives back together is important,” Mackenzie said.
The group is a nongovernmental organization made up of retired veterans, and service workers that respond to assist with disaster relief.
The team came to help during the July floods last year, but this time, they are working with the Northeast Kingdom Long Term Disaster Recovery group created last year.
And, volunteer, Melinda Siri, is glad Rubicon is here to help, in her small town, with the group.
“I can remember drivng by here before all of this and thinking, that is such a cute house. It’s heartbreaking, I don’t know a better word for it than heartbreaking,” Siri said.
And members of Team Rubicon say, they expect to be in Vermont doing clean up in the future, as they have been getting more calls about the states floods.
“The weekend projects really started this year, like in January. When there were still need from the floods last summer. The more we do it, the more people see us, the more people ask. Then the more we actually find out, there’s more hidden need out in Vermont,” Christopher Dawson of Team Rubicon said.
Crews with both groups are expected to continue the work in Lyndon on Monday.