Watching the rain steadily fall outside the back door of her Waterbury home, Kathy Mackey refers to Tropical Storm Irene simply as “the last time.”
Last time, Mackey said, the first floor of her home took on 31 inches of water. She held her hand up to her hip, then against a door frame, to show how high. Last time, she learned what could be replaced and what couldn’t. Her garden fell into the former category; her treasured family photos, the latter. Last time, it took three months of demolition and reconstruction before she, her husband and her children could move back into their home. She learned how a community can rally together to support its members after “something really catastrophic happens.”
“I didn’t cook dinner for, I think, two months,” she faux-whispered, holding her hand up to her mouth like she was telling a secret.
Mackey lives on Randall Street in Waterbury, a picturesque street lined with storybook houses known for hosting epic trick-or-treating on Halloween. It is also remembered for being ravaged by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
On Monday, as rains from a brutal multi-day storm system refused to relent, residents of Randall Street were rushing to bring their belongings up to the second floor and hurriedly packing up their cars. Others stood on their porches, watching as the water inched closer.
One resident, approached by a reporter Monday afternoon, replied, “Yeah, that’s great. I’m busy.” Jogging back into his house, he called back over his shoulder, “Sorry, I’ve just done this before.” Some version of that — “Not the first time,” or “Done it before” — was the common refrain on the street Monday afternoon.
When Mackey heard this week’s forecast, she said, “All the hairs stood up on my arms, thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, not again.’”
The view from Mackey’s back door was immaculate, save for the brown floodwaters creeping ever nearer to her back deck on Monday. In the foreground are the lush green Duxbury Mountains, and at their foot, the Winooski River. Then there’s a cornfield, which floods relatively consistently, Mackey said.
In the 19 years that she has lived on Randall Street, she has learned to gauge how bad a rainstorm is, and when to grow concerned, based on how close the waterline is to her house. And with severe rainstorms becoming ever more frequent, that goal post has inched closer to her house over the years. If water swallows her gardens, she now waves it off. But as the water reached the posts of her back deck, she grew concerned. Monday afternoon marked the closest she has seen the water since Irene, and the storm’s forecasted end wasn’t near.
After Irene, Mackey recalled looking out her back door to see petroleum tanks floating in the flooded cornfields. The branches of a mammoth tree in her back yard were strewn with file folders and papers that had been swept out of the flooded Vermont state office building. Inside her house, her belongings were “just covered in like river slime and oil.”
Having learned from Irene, Mackey and her husband, joined by friends offering their help, were packing up whatever belongings they could from the first floor and taking them upstairs. One of her friends held up a trash bag and got Mackey’s attention, making sure she knew the bag’s contents: Mackey’s shoes. “You’re going to need shoes,” her friend said.
As for whether she will evacuate, Mackey said she is unsure. Last time, firemen came and knocked on everyone’s doors, telling them to leave. They left when about 16 inches of water had accumulated on the road. Any longer, and they wouldn’t have been able to drive out.
Maybe this time won’t be as bad, she said with feigned optimism. Look — the rain was letting up.
