Flooded: by water/ with hardships
The man at top lives on Main Street in Barre, a troubled small city with relatively high levels of crime and poverty. The flood rose 3-4 feet into his house, which will likely be a total loss. Others, perhaps including the two men at bottom, are part of an already homeless population that--given the knock-out combination of this major flood and an existing housing shortage the government has failed to adequately address--will see few prospects for finding a place to live.
Last week's catastrophic flooding swept through Vermont's many small river valleys, where towns, farms, and population concentrate. Historically, people had been drawn there by flatter farmland, as well as by proximity to water and the power it provided to run grain and woolen mills.
Last week was not for the first time those beneficial waterways turned deadly. In 2011, Hurricane Irene raced through the valleys turning quiet rivers and streams into deadly torrents that erased roads, houses, crops, and lives. You have to go back to 1927 for another major flood caused, like this one, by torrential rains—making the current debacle a near-literal 100-year flood.
But the climate crisis, along with increasing development that has eliminated many of the wetlands that mitigated the extent of flooding, will mean that such devastating events will come more frequently and ruin the lives and livelihoods of many, many more people.
And America, it seems, has gone from “there is no climate change,” to “it’s terrible but too late to do anything about it.”
Guess a "Silent Spring" and "An Inconvenient Truth" get noisier and less convenient every day. Your pictures help put it in focus. Thank you Terry.
The ones who can least "afford" it bear the brunt of it. These tragedies highlight the ever-present undercurrent of our indifference and no can do attitude.