Third Street Wasn't on Barre's Buyout List
The river came through Shayd and Laurie Pecor's house in Barre, Vermont, in July 2023. They paid for four months of repairs with insurance and savings. A year later, to the day, the river came back.
Shayd is 59. The plan was to sell to the government in a flood buyout and retire. The city turned them down, along with 39 other households, after weighing which blocks to empty and how much tax money it could afford to lose. He could sell privately. He doesn't want a stranger living there for the next flood.
Third Street Wasn't on Barre's Buyout List
The river came through Shayd and Laurie Pecor's house in Barre, Vermont, in July 2023. They paid for four months of repairs with insurance and savings. A year later, to the day, the river came back.
Shayd is 59. The plan was to sell to the government in a flood buyout and retire. The city turned them down, along with 39 other households, after weighing which blocks to empty and how much tax money it could afford to lose. He could sell privately. He doesn't want a stranger living there for the next flood.
Pies Don't Move You Up, an Interview With the Maine Pump Technician Who Checks Before Anyone Says Drill
CONTINUE READINGShort Explainer
You spent August feeding juniper into a rented chipper and screening the attic vents so embers can't drift in. Since October 1, Colorado law says your home insurer has to show you what it made of all that. You get your wildfire score, where it sits between the best and worst possible, what about your lot pushed it up or down, and how work like yours would change it. If you think the score is wrong, you can appeal, with proof.
Whether the chipper rental ever pays you back is murkier. The insurer can give a discount for the work or simply count it in its risk model, and the law sets no amount. The state's one example, 15% from a single carrier, comes off only the fire-risk portion of the bill.
Two Work Stories
David Mueller Has a Buyer for His Perennial Grain. Most Farmers Who Ask Get Turned Away.
David Mueller has been planting Kernza in Kansas since 2018. It's a wheat cousin you seed once and harvest for years, and it builds soil on about a third of wheat's fertilizer. No elevator posts a price for it, so his crop exists because one company sells him the seed and buys the grain at a fixed price. Most other farmers who call that company get told not yet. And the test plots can't agree on how long a field keeps paying.
Isabelle Ouyang's School Was Finally Getting Air Conditioning. Asbestos Sent It Seven Miles Away.
Isabelle Ouyang, a special-education teacher at Philadelphia's Kensington High, felt lucky in August. After two years of crews in the halls, her school was getting air conditioning. Then asbestos turned up during demolition, and the school moved seven miles away to a borrowed building until January, new bus routes and all. Meanwhile, 52 schools still without cooling get sent home when the forecast hits 85, and the rules don't say who makes up the therapy minutes.
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