On The Mend & Open for Business

Before departing Vermont for another winter at Treble Cone in Wanaka, New Zealand in June, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the effects of the massive earthquakes that devastated Christchurch the prior February and in the months following. In a small country like New Zealand, the often cited ‘six degrees of separation’ shrinks considerably, and even those Kiwis and Kiwi residents with no immediate personal connection to Christchurch have been deeply impacted. It’s hard to overstate the extent and far reaching effects of the quake - the aftermath will be felt by generations of Kiwis to come. Each of my friends in Christchurch have their spirits up despite some incredible losses and, though they still suffer some difficulties in their every-day lives, most are rebuilding, literally and figuratively, spirits intact. In August, the shoe was put squarely on the other foot.

Watching the news of Hurricane Irene as it happened, as the floods tore apart so many homes, lives, communities, here in Vermont was particularly difficult given how far away I was at the time. So, just as I did in June on my way to NZ, I spent a significant amount of time contacting friends and colleagues and thinking about the after-effects of the horrific damage to my home state. Since arriving home to Vermont nearly three weeks ago, it’s been a remarkable experience to travel on our many windy valley-bottom roads to survey the damage. There were several notable and very tragic deaths in my immediate area, many homes completely lost and businesses ruined, and recovery from those aspects of the storm will, as in the case of Christchurch, take a very long time. Despite those aspects of the destruction, the damage to our roads was and remains perhaps the most visible devastation. Thankfully, if there can be a silver lining to such a tragedy, this is where we can find it.

After Hurricane Katrina utterly destroyed New Orleans in 2005, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) became an icon of government inefficiency and political patronage, so they had some ground to make up with the people here. Thankfully, everyone in town seems to have some story to tell, some urban myth to spread about FEMA and the National Guard marshalling resources quickly, authoritatively, and getting to work. In addition to the feds and together with our state and local governments, countless private construction companies of all sizes did not wait to be asked, did not wait for some knight to ride into town on a white horse, and went right to work. The result has been a truly remarkable turnaround, and the speed with which the state’s many obliterated roads and bridges have been rebuilt defies any reasonable expectation.  My friends who were here are much better-versed in the quantitative perspective – metric tons of aggregate, thousands of dump trucks and earth movers, miles of asphalt, and millions upon millions of dollars. The sheer volume of work already completed in the merely seven weeks since the storm simply boggles the mind. Columbus Day Weekend in October at the height of the fall foliage season represents an enormous piece of Vermont’s tourist economy each year, and this year Vermont businesses had the busiest such weekend ever!  It’s absolutely incredible. The numerous comments from FEMA officials about the immediacy, enormity and effectiveness of Vermonters’ community spirit have made all of us exceptionally proud.

In the end, however, it’s not all strawberries and cream here. There remains a daunting amount of work yet to be completed, the bill for all of this will hang over us for decades, and for some families and communities rebuilding will continue to involve far more than heavy equipment and gravel as they put lives back together and move on. Scars will linger in the psyche of Irene’s victims more painfully than they will linger in our landscape.

As we head into another winter season here in Ludlow and at Okemo, we look forward to hosting our many guests, acting as ambassadors for Vermont and for Vermonters. I hope that despite the snowfall which we all await anxiously right now, our guests will be able to see and appreciate what is meant by the shiny new guardrails and bridges, the ribbons of fresh black pavement, and the enormous mounds of earth and gravel still in the work zones. I’m confident that our guests will be reminded when they come to vacation here that it’s not merely the skiing and riding that makes our state so special. It is the spirit of skiing in Vermont that makes it so special, so unique and so worthwhile for so many generations of Americans to bring their families here to ski and ride. This year more than ever that spirit flows from our people.

Now, speaking of snowfall …

The photos here are from a recent trip up the road to Woodstock and Quechee, Vermont. The Woodstock Middle Bridge survived intact but note the right side of the Quechee Covered Bridge in the photo – many more historic bridges were destroyed. I’ve posted these links before, but here are some local charitable organizations that are continuing to provide vital assistance to Vermonters: Black River Good Neighbor Services (www.brgn.org) is a local charity in Ludlow; The American Red Cross of Vermont & The New Hampshire Valley (http://www.redcrossvtnhuv.org) is very active in the area; and Independent Vermont Clothing is giving all proceeds from the sale of this cool t-shirt to Red Cross efforts in Vermont  (http://independentvermontclothing.bigcartel.com/).

How many states were in the Union?

Revere Bell in Woodstock