They planned to get married outside their beloved home. And then the floods came

By Nouran Salahieh, CNN

(CNN) — Spenser Peterson and his fiancée, Mallory Walling, loved their little blue home near Vermont’s Winooski River. They adored the old silver maple tree in the yard, the view of the clouds over a hill outside and the sunsets across a green field seen from the home they’ve been lovingly decorating since buying it just last April.

But when the storms came last week, battering the state with intense rain, overflowing rivers and triggering floods, their beloved new house was standing in the path of fierce floodwaters.

Water rushed into what was meant to be their forever home, rising waist-deep and knocking everything over. It crumbled the drywall, buckled the floors, swelled the doors, damaged the young couple’s belongings and covered everything with sludge.

“We really put a lot of love into making this our place,” Peterson said. “To open that door and to see it in that state, it was extremely painful.”

Peterson had left the house after seeing the water approach on Monday. When he returned the next day, the water was so high he had to paddle up to the front porch. He forced the door open and found their furniture floating around in brown, smelly water.

On the wall, picture frames of the couple and their dog, Danny, were still hanging. “But the foreground in front of those, is just this disgusting water,” Peterson recalled.

The couple was planning to get married in the field outside their Waterbury home in September. Now, the wedding tent in the field is collapsed and covered with mud.

“It’s certainly a little bit disheartening to look across and see that, yep, that’s where we’re getting married,” he said.

The couple is among many across Vermont dealing with the aftermath of last week’s floods that put whole communities underwater, damaged homes, trapped residents and forced water rescues as the state was hammered with record-setting rainfall.

For many, the floods brought back memories of Hurricane Irene, which hit the East Coast in August 2011 and left entire communities submerged, killing more than 40 people in several Eastern states.

Peterson and Walling’s home had previously been destroyed by Irene, and then rebuilt, Peterson said.

“You see stories about people who live in flood zones or areas that do see repeated flooding, and I think it’s pretty natural to wonder why? Why would these people continue to rebuild and live in that spot again?” Peterson said.

The couple knew they were buying their first home in a flood zone, but they just fell in love with it, he said.

“I didn’t think we’d have to deal with flooding this soon after purchasing,” he said. “I knew it was a possibility, but they call Irene the 100 year flood … and it hasn’t been quite that long.”

“It’s not like it’s a yearly thing that we get flooded out and have to rebuild everything. That was a very significant storm and very unexpected,” he said.

The climate crisis is stacking the deck in favor of more intense weather events like the heavy rain and flooding that battered the Northeast, climate scientists tell CNN.

Intense rain events, like atmospheric rivers and torrential, training thunderstorms, are quickly making the idea of a “1-in-100-year flood event” obsolete, according to the report from First Street Foundation, a non-profit focused on weather risk research.

Even before last week’s floods in the Northeast, there had been 12 different billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the US during the first six months of 2023 that left more than $32.7 billion in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It’s always a big reminder to just really like look around at what you have and who you have around you and consider that nothing is permanent,” Peterson said. “Nature doesn’t discriminate and doesn’t have any thought for, ‘maybe I’ll spare them, this is their first home and they’ve worked so hard for this.’”

‘It’s still our home’

When the rain started Monday, Peterson thought he was in for a quiet day at home relaxing with his dog.

But then he saw a giant pond begin to fill in their front yard and started to pack an overnight bag for him and his fiancée, thinking they may only need to leave for a day or two.

An hour later, there were already 8 inches of water in their garage. Nearby, the Winooski River was raging.

“You could see big trees and things were being washed down from people’s homes were going down the river,” Peterson said.

Peterson placed his canoe on top of his truck before leaving, knowing he may have to paddle back in when he returned – his heart still back home worried about what was happening.

“I didn’t sleep at all Monday night because I was just thinking, is it going to flood my house? Should I be there doing more stuff?”

The next day, everything inside the house was underwater. While there was no visible structural damage, everything was “just sopping wet and warped and just crumbling apart,” he said.

He flashed back to before the flood, when he and his fiancée were chatting about how grateful they were to be living somewhere that was their own, how perfectly their bedroom was decorated and how happy they were to celebrate little milestones – like finally owning their first dishwasher.

“I came back Wednesday when the water was gone and began cleanup,” he said. “Everything – yard, driveway, in the house and the garage – was all just covered in nasty river, river sludge and whatever else came down river,” he said.

He recalled pulling out a stack of soaked and bleeding holiday cards the couple had gathered over the years and laid them out in the sun to try and preserve the messages inside.

Though neighboring homes also suffered damage, the couple’s home was among the hardest hit in their neighborhood, Peterson said.

The couple did have insurance – with flood coverage – and were waiting for an insurance adjuster to come out to the home. But they worry there may be repairs that would cost more than the structure itself is worth, he said.

As the two see their lives upended, they’ve been grateful for support from community members and neighbors, many who’ve gone through Irene and arrived to help at the home, give advice and donate to their GoFundMe.

One neighbor, whose garage was also flooded, came up to the house to check in on Peterson while he was speaking with CNN on Sunday and preparing for more potential flooding.

“The community organization here has been incredible – not just neighbors coming over while they’re also cleaning up all their mess,” he said. He was grateful for the ones who opened up their homes to others and offered spare bedrooms, donated food and water and banded together to clean up and collect debris.

For now, the couple hopes to rebuild – even if it means putting in a manufactured home in its place – and take steps to prevent flood damage in the future, like raising the house higher off the ground.

“Our home is in shambles right now, but it’s still our home,” Peterson said.

Everything can be replaced, he said, but what’s important is family. “I’ve got my fiancée and our dog and are alive and well and we have a place to stay right now.”

They also won’t change their wedding plans.

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CNN’s Angela Fritz and Ella Nilsen contributed to this report.