Swampscott residents flooded with frustration

SWAMPSCOTT – Frustrated residents crowded the Board of Selectmen’s meeting Wednesday asking whether the town could have done more in preparation or as a response to last week’s flooding. But town officials, while sharing residents’ frustration, said the extreme nature of the storm and federal guidelines for disaster assistance left residents with few options.”In this particular rain we received 5.7 inches in nine minutes,” said Town Administrator Andrew Maylor at the selectmen’s Wednesday night meeting. But “I think we’re being realistic in saying it’s unlikely that we will get anything but (Small Business Association) SBA loans.”Thunderstorms in the early morning of Oct. 7 dropped 5.73 inches of rain on Swampscott within hours, according to the National Weather Service, prompting flooding that made many roads impassible, submerged basements and cars, and caused sewer backups in many homes.But Maylor explained that the minimum requirements that must be met for residents to qualify for federal relief was incredibly stringent – homes’ major living areas had to be uninhabitable and damages had to be uninsured for Federal Emergency Management Association payments to be available to home owners, he told residents. These funds are typically triggered by disasters such as hurricanes or tornadoes rather than flooding, Maylor said.However, he said assistance might come in the form of low-interest loans from the SBA. These loans can cover the full cost of repairs up to $200,000, Maylor said. This depends, however, on the SBA making a disaster declaration for the region, something which has not yet happened.Residents, however, raised many concerns about the town’s handling of the situation.Maylor said that the town’s decision to not declare a “disaster” would have no impact on residents’ insurance policies – which he said he confirmed with the state insurance commission – did not prevent the town from receiving state or federal funds, and would not have mitigated the flooding. He acknowledged that the town’s drain and sewer infrastructure had developed piecemeal over years and agreed with suggestions for a “holistic” examination of the system in light of increased development in the town. But he assured residents that the system had been adequately and regularly maintained. He also reiterated that the storm was an extremely rare event.”It would be hard for me to imagine an engineer can design a system to address this storm,” he said.But he and other selectmen said they shared residents frustration as many find out that insurance companies, the government and other entities may not be available to help them recover from the storm.”Basically what they’re saying is a tornado or a hurricane is more important than flooding,” said Selectman Jill Sullivan. “It’s devastating, but I’m not sure we can to anything to affect this event” but, she said, we should be ready for the next.