Features
Thursday, September 22, 2011
theonlinebeacon.com
Irene sweeps through Western Mass.
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By Mary Redstone Features Editor
I had been driving for twoand-a-half hours and I was still nowhere near North Adams. Just over a week had passed since Hurricane Irene made its way up the Eastern Coast and over Mass., and the routes into North Adams were still proving complicated and confusing. What was usually a ride that took just under two hours was now taking close to three. However, I pressed onward, clutching onto a paper with Google Map directions as I passed through unfamilliar towns.
Mary Redstone Features Editor
Attack of the Over-Reacting News Anchors
Evacuation Though Hurricane Irene reached MCLA before school had begun, campus was still occupied by students required to arrive early, including RAs and athletes. Only five days into their stay, they were required to evacuate campus. Some students had to move all the way back home, a place they had left less than a week before. Senior Ken Borter, an RA in the townhouses, was one of those students. However, his own evacuation didn’t end when he got home. “I had to evacuate RA training for 3 days,” Borter said, “and then [I] got evacuated from my home due to a threat of a dam bursting, in which it did shortly after. I live in upstate New York and it really got messed up, not from the storm itself but from the flooding and damage after.” Senior Jacob Wheeler was not on campus during the hurricane, but was very close by. Wheeler is a resident in the Boardman apartments on Montana St, and was living there during the storm. “Irene really did have very little impact, at least on me and where I was living,” Wheeler said. “There was some rain, some moderate wind, but little else. I was oddly disappointed by nature’s lack of viscosity.” Senior Todd Foy was on campus as well during the days leading up to the storm and shared similar views on the evacuation. “Essentially, I believed the evacuation was a little extreme for the
Photo Courtesy of MassDOT
Rainwater from Hurricane Irene rips through the road at the hairpin turn on Route 2. The road is now passable, but still damaged. conditions that we experienced,” said Foy. “Having an entire residence hall emptied for some rain and wind was a bit much to me. However, I do understand that the college administrators had our best interests at heart and it was better to have everyone safe with their families other than a myriad of liabilities.” The Damage Hurricane Irene was diminished to a Tropical Storm by the time it reached New England and simply produced rain and wind, but it left behind sweeping damage. Mass Department of Transportation (DOT) created a Google Map showing all of the roads in Western Mass. that have been deemed impassable or dangerous as well as individual areas of concern. The biggest area of concern, in terms of road importance as well as distance, is a 5.8 mile stretch of road on Rt. 2 through the Mohawk Trail State Forest. The closure begins in Charlemont and ends in Florida. This closure makes it im-
possible to take Rt. 2 directly into North Adams. Instead, MassDOT recommends getting off Rt 2 in Shelburne Falls, taking Rt. 112 to Rt. 116, and then using Rt. 8 directly into North Adams, adding approximately thirty minutes to the drive. Luckily, the drive on Rt. 116 is as close as you can get to the scenic beauty of Rt. 2 through the State Forest. Junior Tyson Luneau, however, created his own route to reach MCLA, adding about 40 minutes to his trip. “It took me a while [to make the route]. I had to try a couple different ways,” Luneau said. He said that it ended up getting him there, but he won’t be using it again. “I assumed the backroads were paved. I came across one road in Buckland that [wasn’t] and it was almost completely washed away.” Despite the amount of damage to this part of Rt. 2, not all hope is lost. MassDOT, on their map of detours and road outages, has assured Mass. residents that “The goal of the Highway Division is to
Photo Courtesy of Google Maps and MassDOT
MassDOT has provided Google Maps with information on road closures and detours. The highlighted section of Route 2 is completely impassable, with dots showing specifics of the damage. The Hairpin Turn, however, is passable but damaged. The southern highlighted route is MassDOT’s suggested detour to travel around the damage and reach North Adams.
reopen this segment of Route 2 to traffic by mid-December 2011.” This detour may be longer than the ordinary trip into North Adams, but it is the one with the least storm-related problems. Although the famous hairpin turn on Rt. 2 is still open, it still has considerable damage. A few hundred yards winding back up the mountain on the eastern side of the turn is narrowed down to only one lane due to undermining, an occurance when dirt underneath the road errodes away, cauing the road to collapse. Traveling from Vermont Mass. is surely not the only state in New England to be affected by the hurricane, but it is one that has had the most impact on students. Rachel Hilliard, a senior, is a Vermont resident who was lucky enough to not be on the receiving end of widespread damage. “I was not directly affected, nor was my route to MCLA,” Hilliard said. “I live in Shaftsbury. The next town over from me [Bennington] had a good amount of flooding, and my fiancé and I could not get to his house…due to closed roads.” Professor Robert Bence is also a resident of Vermont who had not been adversely affected by the hurricane’s damage. “I don’t live very far in Vermont,” Bence said, “so with the closing of Rt. 8 in Clarksburg, the damage only added four minutes and two stop lights to my commute.” While it seemed the general consensus of New England was that we were braced and ready for the storm to do its worst, and maybe even a little excited for it, everyone was undoubtedly relieved that it did not actually do as much damage as it could. “Storms have always been hyped,” Wheeler said, “perhaps it gives meteorologists a sense of meaning in an otherwise existentialist abyss. But this was compounded by Katrina; now any storm is blown, forgive the expression, far out of proportion.”
I’m the kind of person who gets sick of network news channels very fast. I don’t enjoy sitting down and watching the news for more than 20 minutes at a time, because I start getting annoyed. News channels, specifically weather segments, like to make people fear for their lives on a regular basis. To me, this was no more evident than in the days leading up to Irene. On Friday, I spent a couple hours at my parents’ business. It was an unexpected visit, so I had brought nothing to occupy my time. I was left with one option: watch the television that got nothing but network news. I sat through at least an hour of news where they did nothing but track the hurricane. While I learned a lot about what makes a hurricane move, why it slows down over cold water, and how it originated, I got sick of all of the fear. Sure, it was a hurricane. Sure, it can wipe off your roof and tear down trees and flood your basement but what I was witnessing was a bit absurd. The anchors, as well as the weather man, were talking more about what would happen to you if the power goes out for more than three days than where the hurricane was actually going to hit. Or, what’s in store for poor Fluffy or Skippy when the thunder and lightening makes them cower under the coffee table. The news the next day was even worse. My father is the kind of person who not only tolerates, but enjoys watching the news for extended periods of time. As the first bands of the hurricane started making their way into New England, the news was a constant stream of what the worst could possibly be, rather than the fact that the hurricane was no longer really a hurricane, but instead a tropical storm. In the end, a few areas of Mass. and a large area of Vermont did get hit pretty bad, but it was nowhere near the hype that was put out by the news stations. Perhaps they want you to fear for the worst so that if it does happen we’ll be ready. Instead, though, I think the message got lost in a sea of fear and an obsession with the worstcase-scenario.