Sad Hurricane Irene Debris Still Litters Vermont

Tuesday, I covered a Vermont governor's press conference for the Burlington Free Press on a showery day next to an area of scrubby sumac trees littered with dozens of tires, pieces of houses and scraps of rotting furniture.

Somehow, the glass on this door didn't break as Tropical
Storm Irene flooding swept this door away last August.

The Governor, Peter Shumlin was announcing a change this year to Vermont's annual rite of spring, Green-Up Day. Green-Up Day, established in 1970, hits the first Saturday in May each year. Thousands of volunteers go out and clean up road side litter that accumulated over the winter. It's really a nice event.

This year, Shumlin noted that while the debris from the devastating floods of Tropical Storm Irene have been removed from the streets of Vermont's scenic towns and villages, there's still a big mess hidden along the river banks and back behind the neighborhoods that were wrecked last August in what was easily Vermont's worst flood since 1927.

So, the governor said Green Up Day would last all spring, and be called Spring Clean Irene. We will still all go out the first Saturday in May to clean up the road sides, but volunteers will also fan out to help clean the debris marring the scenery, a legacy of last August's floods.

There's a nice Web site, Vermont Strong, which matches needs with volunteers and everybody is urged to go there and see what they can do to help.

This tire got hung up in trees during Vermont's Hurricane
Irene flooding last August.

It's all a great idea, and I hope there are a lot of volunteers. The press conference, even with a $25,000 donation from the guy who runs Subaru of New England, was sad, however.

Sad, because I wandered through the underbrush, photographing the pieces of people's lives that floated away in Tropical Storm Irene last August.  Much of the debris consisted of tires from a nearby washed out junkyard. But I'd find a television, childrens' toys, a Christmas decoration, a child's swing, an easy chair.

It was dark and drizzly as I took the photos, some of which you can see in this post, adding to the gloomy tableau. I just hoped that everyone affected by the flood is recovering as best they can.

A Christmas decoration swept away in Tropical Storm
Irene flooding in Vermont last August. 

An easy chair in the woods in Waterbury, Vermont, swept
there by Tropical Storm Irene flooding last August

A child's swing amid the Tropical Storm Irene flood
debris in Waterbury Vermont this week. 

A television amid the flood debris from last August's
Tropical Store Irene, photographed Tuesday in
Waterbury, Vermont

Vermont Irene Disaster Hurts Us All

I haven't posted on this blog for a couple of days because like everybody else in Vermont, I've been dealing with what is perhaps the worst disaster the Green Mountain State has ever seen.

Four people have died, buildings and houses have washed away, hundreds of roads are closed, a few of our iconic covered bridges that had been there for over 150 years were swept away, and towns are isolated.

I'm suffering from a bit of survivor's guilt. I was extremely lucky. Property damage at my house in St. Albans, Vermont consists of a few fallen branches.

The Winooski River roars past Winooski,
Vermont Monday. 

I work as a reporter at the Burlington Free Press, so I've been talking to lots of people who lived the worst of the flood.  Vermonters, me included, are proud and parochial about our state. It's corny as hell to say, but we love our beautiful villages, farms, small shops and rivers.

Some of that is in ruins. There's a video floating around YouTube of a covered bridge in Rockingham,  Vermont collapsing in the flood. Everyone who has seen it said it brought them to tears.

The power of the water, and where it went astounds everybody. I'll never get over it. There was white water on Main Street in Brandon, Vermont that pushed a pizza restaurant 25 feet downriver. In Wardsboro, four houses disappeared. They found a roof in the middle on Route 100 in Wilmington. Nobody knows where it came from.

Many of the towns hit hardest by the flooding were some of Vermont's prettiest. Grafton. Wilmington. Weston.

Some of my favorite places in Vermont are wrecked. The Weston Playhouse. The Alchemist, a brew pub in Waterbury that had the best beer in the state. (They hope to rebuild) My favorite swimming hole in the Mad River was surely hit. I wonder what that looks like.

Below is a video I shot of the torrent rushing past Winooski, Vermont yesterday.


But my mild anxiety pales in comparison to everybody else. I know a lot of people who suddenly have no house. Or no job. No prospects. What are they going to do? Nobody knows, and that's what really gnaws.

That's the refrain I keep hearing. Nobody knows. When will the road out of town reopen? Nobody knows. When will the electricity come back on? Nobody knows. The weather has been weird. Will we get a storm like this again in the coming years? Nobody knows. And that's the scariest unknown.

As always, Vermonters are turning out in droves to help out their flooded neighbors. There's no shortage of good ideas to help. On radio call in shows yesterday people suggested we raid our undamaged gardens and take the harvest to emergency shelters.  A couple of women in Waitsfield set up a table yesterday to solicit volunteers to help business owners start cleaning up. In less than an hour, the pair had 30 people helping out.

We help each other here in Vermont.  At this point, that's about all we've got. And that just might be enough.

Thinking About Irene.....

With Hurricane Irene poised to hit the Northeast, and blast Vermont with gale force winds, flooding, power failures and a tangle of falling trees, my thought naturally turn to various aspects of this storm.

Satellite view of Hurricane Irene taking a cruise
through the Bahamas yesterday

Are people named Irene pissed off that a major storm share their name?

Who names these hurricanes anyway? After Irene, we can look forward to the rest of the hurricane season featuring the likes of Jose, Katia, Lee, Maria, Nate and Ophelia.
'
Will the lines at the liquor store in advance of Irene be longer than the lines at the supermarket and hardware stores?

Along those lines, what is the best Merlot to sip while riding out the storm in your (dark) home?

New York transit officials say millions of subway rats might seek higher ground as the subway tunnels flood during Irene. Pleasant thought, no? "Honey, these 3,000 rats think our living room is a Red Cross storm shelter. What in heaven shall we do?"

I wonder how many people will die stupid deaths in Irene. I don't mean the poor people killed when a tree randomly crashes through a house. I mean the people who look at the violent storm surge rolling toward the beach and say, "Let's go surfing!"

Speaking of which, how many news reporters are going to do the I can barely stand in the wind routine while standing on the beach telling viewers to stay away from the beach.

Will a two-by-four finally sail through a news reporter's head at 90 mph, thereby ending the tradition of news reporters standing on beaches during hurricanes?

You can always tell in advance where the storm will cause the worst damage. Just figure out where the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore is (He's a native Vermonter!) And for the record, last I checked, Cantore was reporting live from Battery Park in lower Manhattan.

Every November, I have a big bonfire from the piles of branches I clean up from storms on my property during the year. I'm going to have a really, really big bonfire this November, aren't I? Bring the marshmallows!

Will all that humidity and moisture from Hurricane Irene wreck my naturally curly hair?