 Good morning, everyone. I know the last 48 hours haven't been easy for many. I actually had to hike the vast trail to get to a drivable road to get to work this morning. I know some reporters slept in their vehicles last night along with many others due to 89 being closed, and I appreciate members of the media for their work to keep for monitors informed and safe. Next earlier today, while overseas, President Biden approved my request for disaster declaration for all 14 counties. This will help mobilize federal resources to support our response and recovery efforts for this unfolding and ongoing disaster. Make no mistake. The devastation and flooding we're experiencing across Vermont is historic and catastrophic. Floodwaters continue to rise in some places like our capital city and have surpassed levels seen during Tropical Storm Irene. The good news is the rain has stopped in some areas, but that does not mean waters will immediately recede. They may in fact continue to rise. And even though the sun may shine later today and tomorrow, we expect more rain later this week, which will have nowhere to go in the oversaturated ground. So I want to be clear. We are not out of the woods. This is nowhere near over. And at this phase, our primary focus continues to be on life and safety before we can shift into a recovery phase. I know thousands of Vermonters have lost homes, businesses and more. The devastation is far reaching. Although the coming days, weeks and months will be incredibly difficult. We face challenges before and Vermonters have risen to meet the moment. Whether during Irene, COVID or other hardships, Vermonters have proven time and time again, we're willing and able to step up and help our neighbors. We're already seeing that again here in the spirit of resilience and goodwill will help get us through this challenge. So many Vermonters have been working around the clock, saving lives and helping those in need. We're on their debt and will be forever grateful. But it will take all of us pulling in the same direction. So I'm asking Vermonters to think about how you can help locally, even just checking in on a neighbor can make a big difference. So again, if you need help, call 211 or if you're in a life threatening situation, call 911. I'll now turn it over to Commissioner Morrison and our team for status update. Thank you, Governor. For those of you I've not yet had the pleasure to meet. My name is Jennifer Morrison. I'm the commissioner of public safety. I'll provide a situation update regarding ongoing threats and rescue operations. I will also provide some information about emergency shelters and volunteering. Rivers are creating severe flooding issues this morning, even along those that have not yet crested. It will take some time for rivers to recede. The Montpelier Barrie area as well as the Ludlow, Londonderry and over and surrounding towns have been hit the hardest. Many other towns are experiencing significant flooding. Please stay away from the impacted areas. As travel is difficult, the weather and water levels remain dynamic and crews will soon be in the area working on repairs. Vermont's 13 swift water rescue teams have now performed more than 100 rescues throughout the state and they remain extremely busy. Additionally, five teams from Connecticut, Massachusetts and North Carolina are in state and assisting. More teams are en route to Vermont to assist with what will be a days or weeks long effort. In many areas, the water conditions remain too dangerous for rescue by boat. Five helicopters from the Vermont and New Hampshire National Guards are in the air this morning assisting in operations. They are conducting evacuations in the hardest hit and most remote areas that are not accessible by swift water teams and they are assisting as eyes in the sky. Do not take any chances. Stay away from rivers and flooded areas. Keep yourself and your family safe by staying well clear of damaged and flooded areas. There are countless road washouts around the state. Please respect all detours and never drive across a flooded road. Any individual reporting a life threatening situation should call 911. You can find a list of state road closures by visiting newengland511.org. And I am not trying to steal Secretary Flynn's thunder but Interstate 89 North and Southbound has reopened. Vermonters can track river forecast and levels at water.weather.gov. There's a longer email address that we can make available to you but there is a way for you to go first hand and track the level of water in rivers. And furthermore residents and visitors to Vermont are encouraged to register for a Vermont alert account at www.vtalert.gov to receive up to the minute safety warnings. We have structural collapse teams staged across the state as well as fire and code inspectors who are prepared to deploy as soon as the water recedes to ensure impacted buildings are safe. We have state troopers deployed throughout the state and patrol zones are being constantly adjusted to allow for statewide coverage regardless of road closures. Troopers have been exceedingly busy with assisting stranded motorists performing welfare checks and reconaturing the state's roadways. We will be deploying unmanned aerial aircraft to assist in locating stranded persons as well as to assess flooding and its impacts. As of 9 30 this morning no injuries or deaths have been reported. I want to reiterate that we are still in the earliest stages of this disaster. Our focus is on saving lives. There are areas that are still being evacuated and there are life threatening isolations that we are trying to identify and rescue. There will come a time that we will need the help of all Vermonters to recover from this disaster. But we are not there yet. For now please focus your volunteer energy at the hyper local level. Check on your neighbors and the most vulnerable in your neighborhood. Your best move today is to either register at Vermont dot gov forward slash volunteer so that we can contact you when the time is right or affiliate with a reputable disaster relief organization directly and become part of their team. Only deploy when you have been given a specific volunteer assignment. Please do not self deploy floodwaters are receding but there are still many hazards out there. Please do not become someone in need of rescue. Before I turn this over to Colonel Poirier I want to say a quick word about shelters. If you are in need of shelter you can do one of the following. You can call Vermont 211 or follow the direction provided by your local officials or you can go to an open shelter. In addition to 15 locally operated shelters. There are currently three state run shelters. They are the Barry auditorium the Rutland High School and later today the Hartford High School will open. My closing words are this stay safe and take care of each other. Good morning. I will be very brief and give you a quick update on what the Vermont National Guard is doing right now. I think it's important to start with just the iteration that when the Vermont Guard deploys in response to an emergency we do so with the Vermont Emergency Management. We don't work on our own. So anything that we do is with complete conjunction with what the state is doing. We currently as the commissioner said have very varying aviation assets in the air and those assets are working now to keep eyes in the sky and to help with some recovery efforts. We also have a quick reaction force or a QRF already deployed and working with Mr. Cannon with urban search and rescue and I will turn over Mr. Cannon to give you the update on that effort. So I'll just start out with to go over some numbers on the rescue. So to date we've done collectively 117 rescues 67 plus evacuations people from flooded homes or businesses or vehicles and 17 animals. Those have been conducted by both our local state and federal partners that are joining us in this disaster. We are still in a very dangerous part of this disaster. We are performing active rescues as we speak today here. We still have reports of people trapped in flooded homes and vehicles in some of the areas that the commissioner and the governor of previously mentioned. As the commissioner indicated we have 13 in states with water teams. They are all deployed or activated at some level and we also have the state use our team operated and activated at full level. We also have six other out of state entities both state and federal urban search and rescue teams that are now in and operating. We are operating 24 hours a day and we have been since 5 p.m. or 3 p.m. on Sunday. We have 5 rotary wing aircraft operating currently. Two with hoist capability which will be beneficial for us for areas that we cannot get into or if we come across areas that's going to be too dangerous for a swift water boat crew to work work with. The other three aircraft are doing reconnaissance right now and we're going to use them also for areas that we can safely land and do evacuations. This is going to be a very long-term search and rescue operation. I expect this to take at least several days if not longer. As the sun has begun to shine we ask that you please not ignore signage. We ask that you not venture to the waterways and again this is an extremely dangerous situation around any of these flooded waterways. I will say please do not drive around any barricades indicating that the roads are closed. This morning at approximately 3 a.m. a swift water rescue team from New Hampshire performed an extremely high-risk rescue on Winooski Street and Waterbury where a person had driven around a properly barricaded roadway and the car was washed off the roadway almost into the river. That team took a considerable amount of time to safely rescue that woman from that vehicle. I cannot stress this enough. Please please follow the direction in the input from local and state authorities regarding road closures and safety decisions. Thank you. Good morning everybody. At risk of running or sounding like a broken record I just heed everything you're hearing about the warnings. This is very serious. When I spoke yesterday there were 24 state roads closed that I reported on. Today there are 78. I won't read the entire list like I did yesterday but I will tell you by region we have five regions at AOT the four quadrants of the state and then the center part of the region of the state. In the southeast region we have 18 closures. In the central region we have 20. In the northeast region we have 18. In the northwest region we have 14. In the southwest region we have nine closures. Additional key routes that are now closed are route two east west in Marshfield, route four in Rutland, route two in many places from Middlesex to Essex, route seven in Middlebury, route 62 in Berlin at Hospital Hill, and route 15 in Cambridge, Johnson, and Wolkland. This is not to imply that other roads are not of significant importance but these are major routes that were added. As Commissioner Morrison said good news is worth saying twice and I will. The good news is I-89 southbound is now fully open and I-89 northbound is open to one lane at this time. Where water appears to be receding and it is not receding everywhere and it may rise again as the governor said. But where it is receding, AOT garage personnel are beginning to gather information on roadway and infrastructure condition. As are our project managers and technicians. Once we can see what has been flooded we will have a better idea as to the condition and potential damage and the work that's required to restore that. Our immediate priorities will be as follows. The national highway system first, east west routes second, principal arterial roads and feeder routes third, routes supporting hospitals and other critical resources. Fourth, in town and local roads as able but the agency's position is it will render all assistance it can to towns and local communities. And I also would like to just mention that independent contractor partners across Vermont are ready and able and willing to step in and they will and we appreciate that. Thank you. We'll open up to questions at this point. Can you talk a little bit about what happened on the interstate? Was it the Winooski River? Was it at one point it was a rock slide? Water over the river or water over the road? Can you talk a little bit about what happened there? Yeah I can let Secretary Flynn talk about that a bit more but that it was water coming off the hillside heading towards the Winooski which is on as you're going north on the left-hand side. So it impacted that area when over 89 and when you can't see it obviously you have to close it off so it was unfortunate but there was the right thing to do to life and safety in mind. Secretary Flynn? As the governor mentioned just north of exit 8 there's some rock ledges on the right-hand side of the northbound barrel and when I went to the EOC yesterday for the 11 o'clock press conference the water was coming across there like a waterfall coming down onto the ditch and eventually it just started cascading across the road which does create an unsafe condition and also on the southbound side there's a bridge and we needed to be able to inspect that bridge before we could open the southbound lane. So our local Capital Region District 6 crew was on that at daylight and we are restricted at this point to one lane northbound while we determine the edge of the roadway because a row of water like that can wash away and undermine the structures and you know potentially compromise the asphalt so that's why that one lane right now is closed. There was reports of a fatality in London Dairy last press conference was that confirmed to be not actually a fatality? I don't have any information on that at this point. It was not. Good news. Can you talk a little bit about what communication has been like between the state and local communities especially when it comes to road closures? Well it's been happening very quick as you are well aware this didn't start until Sunday afternoon and came fast and furious after that. We're trying to keep up but it's very localized as we saw on Friday for instance I went down to view the damage in the Killington Bridgewater area then and going down through Bethel you wouldn't think anything had happened but just a few miles away and there was a significant damage along Route 4 and 100. We saw that a lot during Irene and this is because of our mountainous region. You never know which side of the the mountain is going to to come down and because of the rain and so forth so again we're doing our best to keep up to alert the communities as as we can but but it's hard to keep up when it's coming down so hard. I might ask mission Morrison or others to add to that. The neat thing about the resources on New England 511 and vtealert.gov is that citizens and local officials alike can be notified in almost real time of these things so we are in regular communication through the state emergency operations center with our regional and local emergency planning partners and our communication is is regular it is the cadence of our information we're pushing is quite quite quick as you can imagine as we are still rapidly evolving in this disaster so Secretary Flynn do you have anything else to add to that or we just really quick. What I would add is that each of our nine aot districts has a number of towns in each district and our garages have very good rapport with the local highway crews in their district. We have tried to reach out as we are able we will intake information from those towns as they are able. The rpcs are part of this as well which are managed through the seo c and so as all that information is gathered you know we start to get situational awareness on what's happening in the towns it's communication can be difficult there aren't always people available they answer the phone in small towns because they're out doing something so it's tough especially when you can't get around to all of them so at this stage of a response it's very chaotic at times but we're doing our best at that v-trans at least to make that communication. When I talk about the the emergency operations being closed down last night and why that was yeah it was the the access to and from the EOC center so the complex in in waterbury was surrounded by water but it wasn't impacting the buildings themselves they've been hardened enough so they was stood that but there was water over the road on both the east and the west so we thought it was prudent so we can get people in and out and not impact the local response that we should exercise some of our our continuing operations plan and that's why we're here today but we'll go back there as soon as the water recedes. 2.0 I know it's still a little early to see the full scope of the damage from it but does that seem like a fair comparison? I think it I think it is and I might I might measure that a little bit different I'd say it might be more like 4.0 because as I said in the previous press conference Irene had about a 12 hour duration of of rain and then it was over sun came up everyone went out we were able to assess the damage everything was receding and we went back towards the recovery phase this is different we've had like 48 hours of steady rain of the same intense rain that we saw during Irene so four times the amount of rain and and again we had rain previous to that that we didn't have during Irene so the ground was already saturated for the storm and it's been raining ever since and that's why I'm very concerned about the next few days we will have the sun coming out this afternoon people will think this is over but it's not over because the rivers could still rise the water has to go someplace the reservoirs are filling up and we have to determine the next the next phase the next wave and and that's going to be more rain on or they're predicting on Thursday and Friday so depending on the intensity of that rain and it has to go somewhere again has to be stored somewhere it'll be in our rivers and then upstream to our reservoirs so that's that's giving us a lot of concern but we're monitoring the situation we should we should know trying to make you know modeling what what may happen with the the worst case scenario so we'll be able to communicate that over the next couple of days but we will get a little bit of a reprieve here and to get around but but again I just want to make perfectly clear this is not over Governor there's some warnings about dams also on that state front talk about how you folks are monitoring the dams and what you're going to do for people below those areas yeah well again that's when I talk about the reservoirs I'm talking about those dams as well so we are we are monitoring those we're working with Greenmount power the public service department and others and some of them are controlled by by FERC some are controlled by Greenmount power and utilities and so we have to to work together to make sure that we're monitoring the situation which we are at this point in time so again Wrightsville is getting up to the stage where we'd have to open up some the gates to alleviate the backup because we don't want anything catastrophic to happen with the dam itself but I think it appears at this point in time we'll be able to work our way through that without having to open up those gates but again it's Thursday Friday and depending on the rain intensity then that's going to determine what we do next so we'll have time to to alert everyone in the down downstream areas that will be affected if that happens but I just want people to be aware of the the situation we're facing Governor what's your plan over the next few days? Are you going to be opening a daily briefing like this and give any plans to tour parking parks in the state? Yeah well first of all we will continue to have these these briefings until the emergency phase is over so we'll continue to try and brief all of you so that you can communicate to your followers which is incredibly important I will be touring at some point I'm not sure when it's going to be there might be you know we talked about some aerial viewage first but I don't want to be part of the problem right so we want to make sure that we're taking care of business first and then get out to see the communities and see what we can do to help but we have resources on the ground and we're we're getting that feedback communication back to the SEOC as well as to our office and we're doing what we can to assist but we'll continue to communicate with you Is there any concern about insurance company's ability to absorb these kind of damages and what might happen to premiums going forward? Well there's always that but that will be in the recovery phase and we have a department that financial regulation that will be assisting us along the way we've been through this before so we'll be leaning on those resources as well This might be a little bit too early to talk about but in terms of when we rebuilt from Irene mitigation methods were put into place that you know were an attempt to help us fair another Irene Do we know if those mitigation methods worked? I think so far I would say for the most part yes some of the upsizing culverts some of the the areas where we didn't rebuild again was helpful floodways were expanded look at again again we're not through that through this yet so we'll have to see what happens after Thursday Friday but take the Waterbury complex for instance a lot of work was done to create more of a floodway behind harden the building raise it up and so far so good but we'll see what happens later in the week because again this is not over but for the most part I think everything's working out well I will see what happens at this point in time I'm not seeing the number of bridge structures failures that we had during Irene I think a lot of it is going to be in the communities in the storefronts and the downtowns that are going to be impacted maybe the most all right thank you all very much