Vermont Geological Survey building out of commission for months from flooding

The Vermont Geological Survey is housed in the Waterbury State Office Complex that was washed out last week by Hurricane Irene flooding.

Vermont State Geologist Larry Becker shared this update with us this morning:

Thanks for thinking of us at the Vermont Geological Survey.

For now we will be working from our homes at least with e-mail and then when our work computers are loaded with software to reach shared drives and software. When the shared drive access works we will have connections to our geologic information. We are out of our building for several months and probably more with occasional access through security to retrieve stuff. 2000 people in the Waterbury State Office Complex are in the same boat.

Email just became available this morning so thanks to everyone making contact. It a testament to the care and support that is the hallmark of our organization [AASG].

Everyone is safe and I was able to drive out to this morning to the main road and found a way to work yesterday.

We have a house sized building that is for the survey but inundated in the basement and also about a foot of water on the first floor. Upstairs is fine so we have moved computers and papers that can be salvaged up there. Some furniture can be saved but everything else will be trashed and moved out to dry out the building.

One good thing is that we are near the end of a geothermal related scanning project so all the key geo reports maps etc are out of the office and now in digital. Our situation shows the importance of going digital!

The state complex in Waterbury is closed for two weeks to a month with no power. The 500 people in the agency we are in will be working from home or temp offices so some of the ancillary services that support us such as access to GIS software will have to wait until servers can be reached from new locations.

A big issue for us is that we lost our plotter in the basement. Insurance will cover it but in the short term I have asked for extensions on grant deliverable dates until we work out access to a plotter over a network.

Thank you for offers of support. I think we are ok for now but I will keep you informed. Our administration is doing the best to get us up and running and I am fully at the table with other divisions during the response.

[the video below is from Vermont tv station WCAX]