Ten Years Later

August 27, 2021

Couldn’t schedule my post yesterday due to internet outage. Spotty broadband reliability is one of the issues with rural living.

This weekend marks the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Irene. An incredible amount of rain (17 inches where I live) was dumped here in about a day, plus all the runoff from the High Peaks. I counted fourteen major landslides, and the Ausable River changed course in places.

About a third of the properties in the area sustained damage. Businesses were devastated. All roads out of the area were impassable for a few days, and many roads were wiped out. There were casualties in the Catskills and Vermont, though thankfully none in the Adirondacks. Vermont lost many of its iconic covered bridges.

The reason the impact of Irene in the Keene, Wilmington, and Jay areas isn’t more widely known is that not many people live here. The worst geographical impact was on state land, though the communities downstream were hit hard. Unfortunately, some people decided after Irene that they were done here. Nobody can blame them, but we appreciate people who persevered through the long process of recovery.

For better or worse, Irene was how the area got limited cell coverage. The governor’s assistant was here to assess damage and he was amazed when he was directed to a certain field where a signal was maybe sometimes available if the wind was right. There was a working cell tower in the area within a few days.

What I remember most about Irene was how we came together as a community to rebuild, and how people from downstate, who hike and vacation here and love the area as much as we do, came up to help. It was a long slow process that took much love. A film about Irene premiered last week, and I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was more on the rebuilding than the devastation.