Heavy Rains in Vermont Flood AG Church

Following a deluge of rain that seemed to target Vermont, flash flooding earlier this week left one person dead and countless homes and businesses inundated with water, with more rain expected this weekend.

Northern New England District Superintendent Dan Abbatiello says, to this point, he’s only been made aware of one AG church in the district that has experienced any significant flooding — Cambridge Christian Fellowship (CCF) in Vermont.

Pastor Kris J. Davis, who only became senior pastor of CCF six months ago, says that although the flooding was limited to the basement, it appears the damage could be quite extensive.

“We had 8 feet of flood water — all the way up to the rafters — in the basement,” Davis says. “The fire department, which has been amazing as they came and pumped out the basement twice now, estimates we had 95,000 gallons of water down there.”

Davis explains that the flood waters didn’t enter from above the ground.

“The water table is so high right now it’s literally pushing up through the basement floor and through the foundation walls right now,” he says. “We pumped out the water twice, and each morning we come back and there’s 16 inches of water in the basement again.”

Another problem is that the furnace, boiler, and electrical panel were all located in the basement. Davis is waiting on an inspector to come to let them know what is salvageable and what will need to be replaced, though he estimates it will be weeks before electricity can be restored to the church due to the electrical panel being submerged in the heavily silted and contaminated water.

Currently, in addition to a couple inches of flood water remaining in the basement, Davis says they have about a half-foot of river silt/mud throughout the basement that will need to be removed. In addition to losing sound equipment that was stored in the basement of the 166-year-old church, decades’ worth of other stored church items were also destroyed.

“One of our member’s apartment unit was flooded, so we went to help move her out to a new place,” Davis says. “The cool thing about that was the people we got to meet and impact. So many of those people we would otherwise never meet, and come to find out, many at one time used to attend the church.”

On average, CCF has about 45 attendees on Sunday mornings. Davis says three of the church families lost their homes to flooding.

The church, which Davis discovered was not insured for flooding, will still hold services this weekend. He says they won’t have electricity, so they’ll have an “old fashion” service, gathering in the fellowship hall and using an old upright piano to lead worship.

“This will be a challenge for our church,” Davis says, “but it will also give them an opportunity to see God overcome it and make provision.”

Those interested in learning how to assist the church can reach Davis by email at [email protected].