CABOT – As debris filled the library’s parking lot the night of Wednesday, July 10, Amanda Otto was unsure about the fate of the event she had planned since March. The scene was discouragingly similar to the flooding of exactly a year before; the same disaster Otto was hoping to commemorate with the celebration that was set for Saturday.
Nevertheless, the select board encouraged her to go ahead as planned, she said. Cabot Fire Department volunteers cleaned the library’s parking lot not once, but twice to make space for the event. Their second effort came just hours after the first, when a downpour Thursday morning moved mud and gravel from Whittier Hill back onto the freshly cleaned lot.
Cabot Select Board Chair Mike Hogan said people had asked him why the event was still scheduled despite being flooded yet again.
“Historical events are worth remembering and learning from,” he said in his speech to attendees Saturday. “I think we’ve learned a lot from the last flood. And I think what we learned from last year’s flood helped us weather this flood that we had this recent week.”
Community Members await the start of the duck race on the bridge behind Harry’s Hardware in Cabot, Wednesday, July 10.
Promoting ongoing resilience was a major purpose of the celebration, said Otto.
“We hope that this event provides opportunities for us to connect, reflect, learn and heal, while also having fun,” she told the crowd.
The event was funded by two grants, said Otto who is the youth librarian at the Cabot Public Library. One was through the Vermont Community Foundation and the other through the WaterWheel Foundation. Both grants were created with the hope of helping communities plan gatherings to celebrate flood recovery, she said.
Included were a series of booths where attendees could interact with before participating in the rubber duck river race that capped off the event. Among them were a face painting station and a table where people could write messages of gratitude for the more than 200 volunteers who chipped in to aid the town’s recovery effort last year.
There were also tables offering educational resources such as a booth that handed out “property owner’s guides to re-building for flood resilience.”
Winners of the Cabot Library’s Duck Race July 10, with Marisa Diamond of Diamond Family Circus were back row (all from left) Stella Heber, Orion Vitale and Ella Lacelle; front, Annabel deForge, Myles Smith and Edwin Ciemiecki.
Community members were served free food by Ruby and Shane Baker of Stag and Thistle and Bobby and Stephany Searles of the Cabot Village Store. Neighbors in Action passed out Maple snow cones and iced tea.
Upstairs in the Willey Building, a video ran on a loop showing damages from last year, and newly added footage from the days before. Included was a video of Road Commissioner Sid Griggs, lifting debris with an excavator from the tributary that runs adjacent to the Willey Building.
That stream was partly to blame for the onslaught of water that washed out a large portion of the basement of Harry’s Hardware last year.
The video showed him working swiftly, lifting boulders and trees as they washed into the storm drain. The only thing separating his machine from the eroding bank and rapid waters was a large rock.
At one point he teetered close to the edge of the culvert he was in.
“It scared the crap out of me,” he said.
While his family watched from a house across the river, he maneuvered himself out of the position, rocking his bucket back and forth to get to a more stable spot.
Griggs, who’s worked in Cabot’s Highway Department for nine years, said learning from last July’s floods prompted him to have three excavators ready by rivers before the heaviest rains Wednesday night. That effort may have helped the town avert some of the more catastrophic damages there could have been, he said.
Hogan says the town of Cabot is now planning for a future where floods are more expected. According to him, the select board hired an engineering firm from Central Vermont last month to study Cabot’s rivers and what can be done to help mitigate their flooding. Their findings will be shared with the town in the coming weeks, he said.
He emphasized the community’s ability to come together has, and will continue to be key to its resilience.
“The hard times bring out the best in the community,” said Hogan. “And I think it’s proven true here in Cabot.”
Lucia McCallum interns as the Hardwick Gazette's community resilience reporter with support from the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships. She works with editors at Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism program.
