Irene - During and Aftermath

First I want to send my thoughts and prayers to those who lost a great deal in this storm. We lucked out, we had the minor inconvenience of no power for a couple days, able to experience the storm in the safety of our home with almost no damage to our rural neighborhood. In fact I took the day to listen to the winds and rain, to go out to capture the ferocity of the weather getting soaked head to toe. Yesterday I traveled to the family camp at Hadlock to see if it was damaged. You hope for the best, then as you travel farther north you start to see more and more destruction. Lets be honest, despite all the damage it pales in comparison to the flooding in Lake George, Granville, Schenectady, the Catskills and especially most of Vermont.

Again we lucked out. We couldn't get to our camp by car, there were power lines down everywhere, and both of the neighbors had some sort of structure damage because of the downed tree. The worst we suffered was that our raft was missing as we can only assume it had blown towards the dam during the storm. Once we assessed the situation we tried to drive around to Buttermilk Falls Road only to be blocked by a big pine in the middle of the road. We then turned around to Copeland Pond Road to see the damage on the other side of the lake. Looking at all the folks cleaning up, visibly frustrated, watching them trying to figure out where to start... it gave me that sinking feeling.
 

That wind reaching the 35-40mph mark, perhaps faster, did not have a speedometer on me

The rain was coming down in sheets!

Flooding in a near by pasture

Cones mark the creek overflow

The tall grass in our field never stood a chance

This was a little creek only inches deep, on Sunday it was turning into a river rising above a five foot hill

The water usually flows under that bridge

Only an hour before this the water was up over that bridge

At one point the water was up to the top of the window of that play house

These pictures were on Sunday and below are the images from the aftermath around Hadlock

A line down, clean up started

Neighbor all rights reserved PJN Photography, LLC

This was the access road to the camp

A quarter of the dock under water, not bad, probably worse Sunday

Poor Trailer

This was the culprit that knocked the lines down that snapped that telephone pole in half

Firing up the chainsaws

No pass through heading towards buttermilk falls road

Another blocked road

It certainly gives you a greater respect for the storms of the past like Katrina or any of the tornadoes over this past summer. In fact this was the lighter end of what was once Hurricane Irene, yet it caused so much heartache for so many and who knows the impact for the future of not only day to day life but also the states who already are scrapped for money. The government has to be given credit for the lives saved, the preparation was excellent throughout the coast and the power companies for being on top of getting extra crews to work on the power situation. Yet as you can see it can only help so much. There was a lot of history made and lost on Sunday, Vermont alone can make a person re-think the meaning of land-locked.