Norwich community beats Hurricane Irene

Meghan Kennedy was anticipating her first day of classes of her senior year with her roommates.

Then there was a knock on the door.

"You need to leave as soon as possible. Go grab your important things and head up to the high school."

On August 28, Tropical Storm Irene came to Vermont, damaging many homes and roads across the state.

The flood impacted many in the Norwich community, and some homes and belongings were severely damaged, including residences of students and staff.    

"Someone came and knocked on the door and said, ‘Your area might be getting flooded so we might have to evacuate you,' so we were really confused," said Kennedy, a 21-year-old senior political science major from Lowell, Mass. "Then, 10 minutes later someone came back and said we were going to lose Water Street."

Kennedy expected water up to her ankles or knees.

"We had no idea how serious the whole flood thing was going to be," Kennedy said. "I made sure I grabbed clothes for a couple of days and I grabbed my cell phone, cell phone charger, and then I only packed one bag so I didn't have room for my computer but I made sure I threw that up as high as possible."

Many people shared the same attitude, taking the evacuations and warnings as a "formality."

"I was actually not even worried," said Robert Berkey, an instructional developer for the academic computing team at Norwich.

"Then the water came up in really fast so I had about four feet of water in my main living area."

Isabel Nielsen, an administrative assistant at Norwich, lives across the street from Kennedy and her roommates.

"I live at the corner of Water, Union and Pearl, which is a very-hard hit area," Nielsen said. "We were evacuated to the high school at 3."

Floodwaters rose at least four feet, causing furniture to float and mud to cover the floor and seep into the oven in Kennedy's apartment.

Jill Balasco, a 21-year-old senior criminal justice major from Barrington, R.I., lives with Kennedy.

"It looked like a mud puddle when we came back to the house," Balasco said. "There was a trashcan in the kitchen that ended up in our room and the couch was on top of our glass coffee table."

According to Ellen Liptak, associative director of human resources at Norwich, during the last count there were 26 students that were affected by the flooding and about 20 staff and faculty members.

"Several of (the students) are living on campus," Liptak said. "At this point I believe everyone has found some sort of alternative housing. Not all of them had to physically leave their homes completely."

Professor Dave Westerman, Charles A. Dana professor of geology and associative vice president for research, spent all of that Sunday moving everything from the bottom four feet of his house to a higher level, or upstairs.

"We live in downtown Moretown," Westerman said. "We live right in the Mad River Valley right on a brook. Normally we sit and have coffee and listen to (it). It's a beautiful spot except for once every 500 years and this just happened to be the time."

Westerman also did not expect the water to rise as high as it did.

"The USGS (United States Geological Survey) prediction was low and the water ended up rising really fast," Westerman said.

According to Westerman, this flood was about nine feet higher than the previous flood he had experienced.

"The windows were keeping the water out," Westerman said, "until it reached the split in the windows and then the water started pouring and quickly filled the house."

"We continued carrying stuff upstairs until I was on tiptoes and standing on the kitchen sink counter getting some things out of the corner cupboard and that was the last trip," Westerman said. "We didn't go back downstairs until morning."

Through the next couple of hours and overnight, the water receded and revealed what was left in its wake.

According to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), around 700 homes in Vermont were destroyed or damaged by the storm.

When Westerman and his wife ventured downstairs after a long night of waiting for the water to recede, they walked into a kitchen of floating appliances and belongings.

"(We) went downstairs and all the furniture and the refrigerator and everything was floating up at this level of the ceiling and we were pushing stuff aside to get the last things out," Westerman said.

"And then the next day a second flood happened."

He isn't talking about a flood that washes out roads and fills basements.

"A flood of people, a flood of humanity came into the valley," Westerman said. "Thousands of people. They just spread through the town and they didn't go away for a week."

"The first responders were the Northfield High School sports teams," Berkey said. "The young men were helping move debris and the young women were handing out food and water."

"We've had people we knew, people we didn't know come in and ask (what they could do to help)," Westerman said. "It was amazing. Just amazing."

"It's been overwhelming, everyone's been tremendously helpful and the Norwich students have been just amazing," Nielsen said.

"The number of hours they've put in and the hard work that they're doing and just the way people in town have gotten together. It's really heartening to be living in Northfield."

A professor at Norwich was part of that flood on the next day.

"Well, I only did a small bit compared to a lot of other folks, but my family and I were down there for parts of three days (on Labor Day weekend)," said Rowly Bruken, associate professor of history.

Brucken lives in Northfield, but had only lost power.

"Because we lost power, we listened to WDEV, which is the local radio station," Brucken said. "We heard people calling throughout the night giving updates on what was happing in their town throughout central Vermont."

"That's when the impact of what really happened hit us," he said.

"When you hear people calling in talking about evacuations and talking about bridges being out and worrying about sink holes and roads and roads that were already closed you'd begin to think that this is something that's going to not only have a short-term impact, but is still unfolding," Brucken said.

Knowing this about his community, armed with a shovel, Brucken set out for the Water Street area the next day.

"We did everything from mucking up basements to carting things to dump piles," Brucken said. "Sometimes you just sort of go house to house, especially in the earlier times when there wasn't an organized relief effort."

A community built up from the damaged neighborhoods. While trash and waterlogged couches and other belongings lined the streets and fires burned in backyards, students and others from the community came to help.

"(My wife's) phrase was, ‘I lost half a house but I gained a community'," Westerman said.

"At times I felt part of a real common effort," Brucken said. "In having a community unite around the effort of trying to recover what we could and giving back a little bit of hope to those people that were affected."

"I feel like the community definitely came together," Berkey said. "And that was quite nice because if you stay here a number of years, unless you're in the tight knit community, the overall larger community kind of doesn't do that normally so that was very nice to see."

Kennedy went out into the community with the Norwich women's soccer team to help in the effort.

"It was really nice to see that a group of us could come together to help the community," Kennedy said.

Westerman's house was emptied and everything that could be saved has been cleaned.

"There were lines of people with rubber gloves and soapy water and two power washers going and things got saved and put onto drying racks," he said.

Many material things were lost in the aftermath and mess of the hurricane, but many people are looking past it and are rebuilding.

 "(The house) is all gutted. Fans are going and dehumidifiers are running. The house will dry out and we're going to use waterproof insulation," Westerman said.

For professors and faculty like Westerman and Berkey, the university extended compassionate leave for up to two weeks, according to Liptak.

"I took a week off and didn't teach my classes the first week but I've been teaching the second week," Westerman said.

"(It was extended) for 10 business days for faculty and staff who were grossly affected by the situation," Liptak said.

"I spent the next four or five days working from sun up to sun down trying to get everything clean," Berkey said.

Although houses are still being worked on and fixed, many are grateful for what they do have left and the community that has been formed around them.

"It's just things (that were lost). I'm happy I'm alive with my animals, my dog and my cats are fine," Berkey said. "I'm still aware that I'm in the top 10 percent of the world's population by having clean drinking water and a roof over my head."