Everyone has one. Or more.
Since raising my hand and becoming involved with coordinating volunteer donations and efforts in our post-Irene central Vermont White River Valley, stories have been piling up in my overburdened brain. In between emails and phone calls, I grab my iPAD and read Ann Patchett’s wonderful little book about writing. In The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life, she says, “Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.” That’s what I face daily. How can I possibly describe in my weak and disappointing words the stories I’m hearing.
“I think the beach the river left around my property is beautiful. All that sand!” Right. Until you discover how toxic that sand/river silt is. Hasn’t she heard about all the propane tanks broken loose and spilling into our rivers? And all the topsoil Irene ruined?
“It’s safe to drink the water,” says one local small town’s manager in the town where I’ve done some phone answering as a volunteer. But I know better from people’s stories. Take the woman who said, “No way! Even if you boil it there’s scummy stuff floating on it.” Or the man leaning on the doorway, obviously totally exhausted, saying, “Our water smells like gasoline—even when I boil it.” And then later a FEMA guy with some chemistry background reacted to that account by saying, “Get the EPA here now! That water contains (followed by a lot of four syllable chemical terms totally new to me!) and boiling makes it worse—it could explode.” However, I think the EPA's busy--and underfunded. Or maybe cut altogether by now. This guy has to solve this on his own.
I heard another heartbreaker while volunteering in the local food pantry the other day: “I need bottled water.” We’ve got a lot of it—help yourself, I tell her as I volunteer to play Grandma while she shops.
“My baby had very bad diarrhea until I started making her formula with bottled water.” “We’ve got lots of water for you. Please use it—for everyone in your family.” The Red Cross has delivered mountains of water (not to mention all the other federal sources of water lately) but getting it to where the baby’s formula is being made is a whole other challenge, given that many are trapped in unpassable roads. Nor do people want to leave what little they have left to get out to see what’s available to them. Thankfully we haven’t heard about much looting, but lots of people are taking pictures! Also, we live in a very independent culture where few care to ask for help. Oh, just so you know. I saw the baby, smiling and happy several days later.
One of my favorite stories appeared just yesterday: “Karen, my neighbor needs a yurt-he can use what’s left of his house if he dries out the lumber over the winter to rebuild, but he wants to live on site.” Ever tried to find a used yurt? I did hear about one from a friend who knows the area very well and he told me “But it’s gone now.” Then last night a young woman told me about a group of great teenagers from our nearby Sharon Academy who are headed to Maine next weekend to learn how to build yurts. They’ll bring back their knowledge and muscle to help. Problem potentially solved.
But we continue to scour the area for temporary places for people to live. We know there are vacation homes all around and we know people are eager to help, but coordinating all that seems to be beyond anyone’s expertise, time or energy right now.
During the hot weather following the flood, a friend of mine had to abandon her car, walk several miles, and became very dehydrated. She spent the day with an IV hookup in one of the truly wonderful makeshift clinics that sprang up immediately (thanks to area hospitals and medical disaster experts.) She’s in Massachusetts now wondering how to get her car back.
“Can you get our volunteers and road crews Gatorade? All people have is water to drink—that’s great, but they’re getting sick of it.” "Can you get us some juice?"
Fortunately we have a system in place through our Episcopal churches in Vermont and the “angels” in White River Junction can fill our requests as fast as we can send them. My learning curve on what people really need (gas cards!! or even a car!) and what will be nice to have later (furniture when they have a place to put it) has spiked this week.
This morning I got an e mail asking for water testing kits!
I’d heard from my new “best friends” at a huge Feed Supply outlet that those kits which are usually just given out, are in very short supply. So I wrote to my new contact at Dartmouth Medical who immediately wrote back, “Where do you get water testing kits? To which I responded. “Beats me. Do you know any chemists? Or plumbers?” She wrote back: “Okey dokey.” And I suspect, knowing Mary as little as I do, I’ll hear of some water testing kits coming our way soon. Towns that even have health officers might not have them.
The stories just keep piling up. Some don’t actually shatter my heart. I’ll leave you with two. A friend still stuck on Stony Brook Road, the worst road in Stockbridge, is one of the few who has internet access. So every day he prints out the latest news/town directives and posts them on his barn for neighbors to read as they walk by. A 90 year old woman needed medical attention so the neighbors put her in a sidecar of an ATV and bounced her several miles to their town green for a helicopter to medivac her to the closest hospital. She was heard to say, “I’ve never had so much fun in my entire life.”
I hold her close to my “living beauty of imagination.” Just as I hold Gabriel who had to leave his lost pet bunny when the family ran to safety in Bethel. After the flood, they pushed the kitchen door open and there was Gabriel’s bunny perched on the topmost kitchen counter. Who knew bunnies had such faith? Or that they could swim to safety? I later tearfully watched as Gabriel’s house was hauled away. But I smile when I remember his bunny.








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