Thanks, Irene: A Camping Trip Cut Short

    Every August since I was four years old my family has gone camping at Cobscook Bay State Park in Maine. It is located just off the Bay of Fundy almost as far north as you can go on the coast of Maine. The park is full of beautiful campsites right on a tidal, saltwater inlet called Whiting Bay. We usually stay for about a week, but in 2011 our plans were abandoned because of an approaching storm: Hurricane Irene. Hurricane Irene started as a category 3 storm in the Bahamas, but by the time it reached North Carolina it was a category 1. The remote location of the state park means that we do not have internet access or cell service while we’re there. We usually just turn our phones off completely until we want to take pictures. That week in 2011, my parents had been following news of the storm in the newspapers they picked up from the general store about 30 minutes outside of the campgrounds. They knew it was coming, and had already decided we would leave a few days earlier than we’d originally planned when some park rangers showed up to our site. The rangers told us that my Aunt had called them, asking them to warn us about the hurricane. 

My parents, three siblings and I packed up our campsite just in time. It began to rain lightly just as we got in the car to make the trip back to our hometown, Schenectady, NY. We always drive home through Vermont and New Hampshire to avoid the traffic on Route 1, which goes all the way down the coast of Maine. Luckily, Irene had not gotten very bad along that route before we started the 12-hour drive home. My parents later found out that many of the roads and bridges we drove on the get home had been washed out by flooding following the storm. If we had left the campground any later, we probably would have been stuck. The storm never actually made it to where our campsite was. It went out to sea before it got that far north on the coast. 

Irene hit New York State around the 28th of August. When we arrived back in Schenectady, we prepared for the possibility of losing water and power at my house. My mom filled every container in the house with clean water and made sure we had a flashlight in every room. My house is at a high point in the city, so we did not suffer any major flooding, but many other neighborhoods did, including where my Aunt lives. My brothers spent hours one day pumping water out of her basement, but it just kept pouring in. A lot of people we knew also lost power for days, but my house never did. 

The neighborhood hit the hardest by the flooding  in my hometown is called the Stockade. It sits on low ground along the Mohawk River, a tributary of the Hudson River. The Stockade endured extensive damage, with some houses being consumed in floodwaters up to the second floor. Some people say that if the movable dams on the Mohawk River had been raised earlier, the water would not have gotten quite as high and the flooding would not have been as bad. According to an article from a local newspaper, The Daily Gazette, the dams could not have been raised without damaging the machinery. 

The Northeastern US was hit with another powerful hurricane just over a year later: Hurricane Sandy. Sandy, which raged from October-November 2012 also hit Schenectady pretty hard. Once again, my house suffered minimal damage. Considering how often they occur, I’m very lucky that my family has not been more affected by hurricanes. 

References 

Avila, L, Cangialosi, J. “Tropical Cyclone Report Hurricane Irene.” National Hurricane Center, 19 December 2011. Retrieved from https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL092011_Irene.pdf

Samuels, Brett. “ Remembering Irene, five years later.” The Daily Gazette, 28 August 2016. Retrieved from https://dailygazette.com/2016/08/28/remembering-irene-five-years-later/

“Photos: Hurricane Irene's destruction on the Capital Region.” The Times Union, 23 August 2016. Retrieved from https://www.timesunion.com/news/slideshow/Photos-Hurricane-Irene-s-destruction-on-the-133917.php