IRENE
Everyone has an Irene story. At FAMILY's Woodstock Hotline, we were involved with many of those stories, and still are today. The impact of such a devastating event takes a very long time to reveal itself fully. The mud may be gone, but re-building a home, or re-locating a life, is a different level of task.
FAMILY's log entry on Sunday, August 28th, calls the power out around 2 AM. Without a generator, FAMILY staff plug in our two white landline phones, which don't need electricity to operate, as our complex nine line system does. Without power, FAMILY is down to one Woodstock telephone line and another line that takes rollover calls from our other Hotline offices in New Paltz and Ellenville and from Ulster County Mental Health. It is quiet at first. Then the calls begin...
In times of crisis, we find out a lot about our community. And we are reminded what people think and feel about FAMILY. On Sunday morning, Tamara Cooper, FAMILY's Program Director, managed to get to the Rock City Road building and kept FAMILY on line all day. Calls came in from people who were anxious about the power outage. Did we know how long it would last? They wanted to know where dry ice was available, if they could get emergency food, how they could be evacuated, how to contact the Red Cross. FAMILY staff from Lake Hill and Phoenicia called in to report on road conditions. Someone dropped by with a radio so we could monitor official advisories and citizen accounts on the ground. We received contact and resource updates from Ulster County Mental Health (we are their after-hours on-call service), the SPCA, and FAMILY's programs around the county. Someone called to report, happily, that the spider webs in her yard were staying strong in the storm.
In the midst of this constant flow of questions and information gathering (and the information changed moment to moment), Tamara and later the Night Shift person, Julia, took time to speak with some of our regular callers who had not been affected by the storm. These people rely on FAMILY to be there late at night when they are lonely, depressed or having a panic attack. Staff listened as they processed family conflicts and talked about the voices they were hearing, how terrified they were.
By Monday, a few more staff and volunteers were able to get in. Ellen came in from High Falls. “People came in for food. They called to talk about how isolated they felt at whatever shelter they had been moved to. Out of town family members called to find out if we knew how their brothers, sons, and daughters were. We had lots of referrals from United Way’s regional 211 information and referral service.”
A quick look at the log entries for Monday and Tuesday show that our counseling services in Woodstock had resumed, some bus runs had started up, and Central Hudson was gradually restoring service. A homeless horse was reported. A parent called needing to talk because she was home with a family member suffering from manic symptoms and another called, just home from the hospital, anxious. People reported their cars washed away or broken down. Someone came in hoping to find a birthday cake... and there was one in the refrigerator! At some point on Tuesday, a woman called to talk about having lost her stability. This was a refrain our volunteers and staff were to hear over and over in the coming days and weeks.
Also on Tuesday, Art Snyder, Director of the county's Emergency Management (911) System had called requesting we send FAMILY case managers to the Belleayre Shelter facility. Michael Berg went up that day to scope it out and the next day FAMILY staff began the first of many visits to individuals and families at Belleayre, as well as to homes in Mt. Tremper, Phoenicia, Fleischmanns, Pine Hill, and Margaretville, and to community centers and food pantries throughout the northern part of the county.
FAMILY offered crisis counseling and case management, working closely with the Red Cross team and the Mental Health Association. Letting people know that their neighbors around the county saw their plight, listening to their sadness and frustration, helping fill out paperwork to receive compensation, and identifying resources that were available and would be needed as time went on--this was the kind of assistance FAMILY provided. Serious flooding in Ellenville, Napanoch, and Wawarsing drove people to seek food, shelter, and other emergency help through FAMILY of Ellenville. More than 275 households to date have received food, clothing, counseling, emergency housing, fuel, and security deposits for relocation in the southern part of the county. FAMILY is collaborating with community groups in the hardest-hit areas, and our leadership is participating in local and county meetings to plan for future emergency response efforts.
NEVER ALONE... If you weren't devastated by Irene personally, then you probably were involved in one of the many efforts to help. FAMILY is still distributing added resources for the region's Food Pantries with a grant from the Dyson Foundation. We are collaborating on housing assistance with RUPCO using funds from FEMA and Dyson and providing furniture, bedding, clothing and food.
The outpouring for flood relief came from every corner of the county. The Catskill Center for Conservation and Development's annual Lark in the Park in October presented more than thirty events over ten days in the Catskills. Added to the registration/welcome packet for participants, many of whom were visitors to the region, were letters soliciting donations for five relief organizations, including FAMILY. The Northeast Regional Folk Alliance, which holds its annual conference at the Hudson Valley Resort in Kerhonkson, expanded their usual support for FAMILY of Ellenville's food pantry because of the increased needs after Irene and Lee.
The largest benefit for FAMILY's flood relief fund to date was the star-studded September 18th concert at the Bearsville Theater presented by WACBIZ (Writers and Artists Collaborative) and WDST-FM. A filled-to-capacity audience and a silent auction of music memorabilia and front row concert tickets raised more than $11,000. Suzanne Hilleary, President of WACBIZ said it was amazing to see the concert come together so quickly. “It happened in 48 hours! We already had the theater and most of the musicians lined up for a Frack Action fundraiser the same night. Robbie Dupree came forward and suggested we move the date of the Frack benefit and jump in to help our neighbors who were in terrible need. Everyone agreed. It was an incredible night.”
HEALERS TO THE RESCUE! FAMILY's partners at Health Care is A Human Right had to cancel their scheduled Holistic Clinic on Sunday after the hurricane, but local massage therapists Emily Bobson and Angel Ortloff knew that care would be needed. They set up a clinic the first week and continued for the next seven. HCHR's free clinics, featuring Reiki, massage therapies, acupuncture, reflexology, homeopathy, and other alternative healing modalities, are generally offered every few months at FAMILY locations in Woodstock, Kingston, and Phoenicia. The clinics are funded by small grants and donations. But after Irene and Lee, the need was huge. Eighteen practitioners, organized by Bobson, Ortloff, and acupuncturist and HCHR co-director Julia Rose, offered services weekly at the Parish Hall of St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church in Phoenicia.
More than thirty people attended each clinic, receiving two or three healing modalities each time. “We used about a year's worth of supplies in two months,” observed Susan Weeks, director of HCHR. Part of FAMILY's flood relief grant from the Dyson Foundation will replace needles, remedies and other clinic supplies. Practitioners work for a small portion of their normal fees paid through a separate grant.
“For the first few weeks we dealt with the adrenaline energy and injuries from digging and lifting under stress,” noted Weeks. “It was shock and overwhelm,” recalled Ortloff. “People were so grateful. Then there was more depression as the weeks went on. What was really beautiful was the way people reached out to their neighbors in need once they felt a little better themselves.” The practitioners praised the Parish Hall as an important part of the healing environment. “M J Reiss takes care of the Hall and she always brought food and beverages. Everyone was working so intensely. The support was wonderful.”
The clinics will resume every three months in Phoenicia and they expect to have many returning participants. Julia Rose knows the need will continue. “When a community experiences this level of devastation, the physical, emotional, and energetic post traumatic stress continues long after the infrastructure has been repaired.”
It is ironic that what creates the best soil also takes it away. The risk of flooding is a well known fact of life for produce farmers. Farms are adjacent to rivers because the richest soil has been laid there over centuries. In Ulster County, Irene and Lee devastated most of the fall harvest of the large production farms. Kelder Farms lost 100 acres of their “pick your own” operation. Some of the farmstands, like Saunderskill and Wallkill View were under water as well. To make matters worse, the storms (and the snow storm as well) came just as the big money-makers, the commercial crops like pumpkins and winter squashes, were due to be harvested. Lost income and damages from flooding along the Esopus and Rondout is estimated by the Rondout Valley Growers Association (RVGA) at $2 million.
The impact of these huge losses might have been devastating to the collaboration between FAMILY and the RVGA, Farm to Food Pantry, which has been supplying food pantries and feeding programs around the county with fresh and fresh frozen local produce for the past three years. Just when it was needed most, other resources filled in the gaps. According to Fabia Wargin of RVGA, Kingston's Farm to Table Co-Packers facility donated their unused frozen items from last year's harvest to the FAMILY/RVGA project. A summer camp in Sullivan County donated their unused frozen and packaged foods as well, filling the program's winter distribution freezer. Wargin said that a portion of the food was delivered to flooded areas that needed food aid.
UlsterCorps recruits volunteers to glean produce that is left in the fields. According to Rik Flynn, who is on the Board of UlsterCorps, there is concern that the impact of the storms will affect the food distribution for next year. “The effect works in concentric circles and the circle that includes the food pantries is likely to reach us next harvest season. We don't know yet what that will look like. We hope the recovery is good for farmers and that will help everyone.”
Farmers live with change. But the loss of topsoil, the loss of acreage, cannot be recovered. It takes between 100 and 500 years for just one inch of topsoil to form. Farms in Ulster and Schoharie have lost acres of it. Bob Kily of RSK Farms in Prattsville, who supplies potatoes to many farm markets and restaurants in our area, lost fourteen acres of soil. Pete and Robin Taliaferro operate Taliaferro Farm and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in New Paltz. Pete writes a blog on their website, but he hasn't written since the storms. “Every ounce of energy I had, I had to use just to be able to get to the end of the year, to keep up a smile. People came by to help, offer their trucks and bring us food. They asked 'What do you need?' All of it gave us such great emotional support at a time we really needed it.”
Taliaferro and his fellow farmers are piecing together their reparations; a bit from crop insurance; some from relief funds. The income losses are tremendous. Taliaferro shared that his 2010 sales at this time of year to his wholesale distributor were $38,000. This year, the distributor owes him just $1,800. A number of fundraising events have been put together so that those of us who “eat local” can support the restoration.
You can also participate in one of these relief efforts:
Rondout Valley Growers Association: Someone found a bunch of pumpkins in the creek by his home in High Falls. He wrote to farmer Bruce Davenport to see who he could send a check to for the pumpkins. This generous act sparked the Paper Pumpkin fundraiser for Rondout Valley Growers Association. Available online until the end of the year!
The New York City Watershed Agricultural Council has an online fund for farm relief.
Richard and Mary Ann Erickson at Bistro-to-Go have generously started this fundraising effort for RSK Farms
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