The world doesn’t get less scary. We just get older. People are resilient because they have to be and while the world is unequal in how it distributes advantages, nature itself is indiscriminate. It’s not that no one is safe, but that safety is a transient state, and that every calm moment is a gift.
It’s rarely good when your small hometown makes the New York Times. It’s important to point out that it did because of a video showing the Beacon Falls Fire Department rescuing people stuck in Brookside Inn with their engine ladder. Towns band together when they need to. People do.
Videos have been flying around everywhere of people helping each other, people sharing GoFundMe links, people thanking first responders. People having basically decent responses to something terrible that happened in a relatively small geographic region. Nature is beyond our grasp, but how we respond to situations is in our control. Coupled with sadness and concern is pride in my little hometown, in people reaching out to each other to make sure they’re okay.
It’s important for a town to have a strong chin, and I think there’s no question of that when it comes to Oxford, and all the other towns around it that took a haymaker over the weekend.
There isn’t much positive to say about it, and I think I’ve said all the good things I can manage. The negatives are obvious and apparent and don’t warrant elucidation here either. It’s worth pointing out that similar floods hit central Vermont bad last year, too. Extreme weather is getting more extreme. I’m anticipating a certain kind of reader that would be angry at what I’m implying, who would argue that now is not the time to grind my axe or step up on a soapbox, but regrettably I think the conversation would be incomplete without an overture toward the two scary words: climate change.
I’m not saying I know why the storm happened, and I’ve heard from a couple different places that the spontaneity and intensity of Sunday’s rain warrants prolonged study because of its apparent unpredictability. But unpredictability itself becomes more predictable and less surprising when you consider that the world’s getting hotter a lot quicker than we thought it would by now. The more intense and apocalyptic climate models are more accurate in predicting extreme weather than the more austere, attenuated models that more optimistic climate scientists put forward. And listen, I’m a fucking idiot and I don’t know what I’m talking about, but all I have is my own read on the situation, and I think it does a disservice to towns like Oxford and Newtown and Redding and Southbury and Woodbury and Shelton and Derby, to not point out that this might become more common in places closer and closer to home, if not directly at home, if we don’t do something. What that something is, I have no idea. So maybe I’m just paying lip service to a conscience searching and failing for something to do about a situation much bigger than individuals and their choices. But omission, to me, would read as dishonest.
All the towns that endured the floods are still here. Their people are still here. I heard whispers about the National Guard coming, and Lamont declaring a state of emergency, and I hope that lends some federal relief to our region, so the strength and community of each town can be bolstered by financial support that matches the vitality they’ve already demonstrated.
In the meantime, so we don’t hold our breath in inaction, here are some GoFundMes I’ve seen floating around to support a daycare that was flooded in Oxford, raise funds to rebuild one house, and another, that were destroyed. Here’s a general GoFundMe for Oxford, broadly. And if you’re reading this and you know of other links, let me know and I’ll add them here.
Water recedes and towns rebuild. All we can do is try to look out for each other in the meantime.
matt nilsen 