Vyto Starinskas / Staff Photos
Traci Templeton dries out family photos while moving out of her destoyed house on Route 100 in Pittsfield on Friday.
By Thursday after Irene, children in Pittsfield had learned to tell the difference between a Chinook and a Black Hawk helicopter by listening to the sound of the rotor blades overhead.
In Stockbridge, locals traded tips on the tastiest Meals Ready to Eat with rescue workers and Forest Service personnel as they took a break from offloading supply trucks.
Irene has thrown groups of locals, volunteers, rescue workers and state emergency crews together into temporary communities born of necessity, where strong bonds are formed quickly but nothing is as it was before the storm.
Both towns had enough food and clothing delivered by the middle of the week to be sufficient. But a host of issues remain - electricity and phone service is slowly coming back on line, but the cleanup and rebuilding of severely damaged roads has just begun.
One small cluster of houses above Stockbridge, on Stony Brook Road, is completely isolated, and will not be reconnected for months, said Det. Sgt. Eric Hudson of the Vermont State Police.
“We found out late yesterday that the road into those folks is not going to be completed until next spring,” he said. “The significance of the washout, the amount of resources that it would take would be too significant at this point because of the road structure, getting heavy trucks in here is weeks and weeks away.”
He said Route 107 through Stockbridge, which in places has been completely carried away, was two to three weeks from having a temporary roadbed in place that would allow heavy equipment and supply trucks in.
Nonetheless, townspeople are adjusting to the new normal with a sometimes frenzied level of activity.
Peter Borden, Pittsfield’s Emergency Management Coordinator, has been fielding calls from the national media for days on any one of three cell phones he carries in his car, while organizing supply runs to Stockbridge, volunteer repair crews for sections of road and rushing south of town to meet a Chinook helicopter that is dropping off shrink-wrapped pallets of bottled water and MREs.
Under the eaves of the Pittsfield General Store, he thanked a camoflage-clad soldier wearing the patch of the 101st Airborne Division, who had arrived in a chopper to pick up sick resident.
A dozen children were playing in the playground out back of the Town Hall, while a group of men barbecued pizzas on the town green. ATVs and rugged golf-cart-like vehicles called Gators carried people and supplies from point to point.
Patty Haskins, the town clerk, answered a phone call Thursday.
“Hello, Town of Pittsfield.” Pause. “I’m sorry, the town is in a state of emergency. Can you call back in two weeks?”
The caller, undeterred, tried to find out about a tax payment, but Haskins put him off to return to organizing the town’s resources.
Millionare trader and Spartan Race founder Joe Desena drove by in his backhoe, unshaven and smiling. He picked up a pile of ruined carpet in the bucket and carried it down to the mud-covered parking lot of Pittsfield’s Bikram Yoga studio, where he dumped it into an oversize trash container. Casella was scheduled to make its first trash pickup later Thursday.
Robin Crossman, a veterinarian and finisher of Pittsfield’s notorious Death Race earlier this year, was on a mission to find a 17-year-old cat trapped in a house. He rode up with Bradford Broyles, the Rutland County GOP chair, who was delivering water, medical supplies, dog and chicken food, and a hand-written note to someone in town. They stopped in town and Crossman offered advice to a man about his dog. A woman had asked them to evacuate her pet Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, but they were unable to locate her. Their search for the cat carried them up a muddy, undermined road high above Pittsfield, and ultimately ended with the 17-year-old Nala meowing in a cardboard box in the back of the SUV.
A caravan of a pickup truck and two heavily-laden sedans made their way north to Stockbridge with supplies. Route 100 was washed out in several places, and the bridge across the White River near Ted Green’s Ford — which was rebuilt just recently — was buckled and undermined on the north side. A field of corn beside the river was bent as if blown by a heavy wind, but still standing.
The convoy arrived at Stockbridge Commons and unloaded their supplies into the basement of the commons meeting house, where fire crews and rescuers had gathered to coordinate.
“Even within little remote communities of four houses, they’re banding together. It isn’t easy,” said Bethel Fire Chief David Aldrighetti, who has . “You know, we’ve got a long, lonely haul ahead of us, that’s for sure.”
Since Monday Aldrighetti had been evacuating sick or elderly residents, getting people out of washed out areas, and delivering medical supplies and food to remote areas, via back roads up from Bethel.
He said access to surviving homes was less of an issue than you might expect, for emergency purposes.
“It’s amazing, they’re making access quick,” he said. “It’s not a road, as...we know it, but it’s something we can get emergency vehicles through, which is the best we can expect.”
-Rob Mitchell
Thank you for this blog and the videos. It is helping those of us in Rutland and elsewhere stay connected to the ones who are isolated.
Posted by: Rebecca Boggess | 09/03/2011 at 07:05 AM