Worcestershire Journal – Where were you when your lights came back on?
by Karl - February 26, 2009 5:03pm
Most of the angst regarding Holden Municipal Light Department’s handling of the December ice storm was focused on communications, the delivery of information that was incomplete, incorrect, or just plain absent. So, YNB (your noble blogger) was pleased to see that the Board of Selectmen would be having a debriefing meeting this week. It would be a chance for the whole town to hear and be heard.
For a meeting about communications, it didn’t start well. I arrived at 6:20, went to the main door, and then to the business office window, where I looked around for a sign that would direct me to the meeting location. When I mentioned that I was here for the Selectmen’s meeting, the very nice person behind the counter stared at me blankly. After a few awkward moments of silence, another very nice person whom I couldn’t see said, “I think it’s in the meeting room.” The first very nice person directed me to go through an unmarked door, around an unmarked corner, and down an unmarked set of stairs, to the meeting room. I then saw that there was a side door leading a parking lot.
The selectmen had started their meeting at 5:30, so that, as I settled into my front-row seat, several of the selectmen spoke from their notes, gently raising the question of whether it’s a good idea for the Town Manager to have responsibility for the light department as well. Selectman Ken O’Brien offered that we should ‘review the organizational structure’ as the result of this event. Selectman Joe Sullivan observed that a lot, perhaps too much, knowledge of the electrical grid resides in the heads of certain key, long-time employees and that a comprehensive CAD drawing would help in future emergencies, allowing outside crews to understand the system configuration more quickly.
At 6:30, Chairman David White opened the discussion to the public. When I use the term public, I’m being generous. By my account, we had, in addition to two newspaper reports and YNB, eight people in the audience, approximately 0.04825% of the town’s population. Eight people. We could have borrowed someone’s Suburban and held the meeting at the drive-through at Dunkin’ Donuts. And, not everyone spoke. If we’d held the meeting at Dunkin’ Donuts, a couple of guys wouldn’t even had a cruller.
The people who did speak were articulate, respectful, and earnest. We heard about the lack of good information through most of the storm period, about the difficulty removing brush from the Beetle zone, about the challenges faced and overcome by the nursing home workers who had to thread their way through the traffic gridlock on Main Street. We heard stories about how some town workers were having difficulty making the transition from business-as-usual bureaucracy to the business-as-unusual nature of the times.
One citizen reminded us that, in the wake of 9/11, we’d all do well to have a personal disaster preparedness plan with the basics – non-perishable food, water, batteries. While this might have been a once-in-a-century event, we can’t always expect that government or others will be able to help us.
The public comments wound down about five minutes past seven, although follow-on discussions led to a bit more commentary from the um, assembled throng.
Selectman Sullivan then told of how many people stepped forward, showing up at the shelter that had been set up at the Senior Center, asking, “How can I help?” Townspeople, unsolicited and unpaid, worked in the kitchen, mopped the floors, answered the phones. While many people worked long and hard for pay, others worked long and hard because it was the right thing to do.
There’s still a lot of brush and tree limbs on the roadside, but there are hopeful signs, too. One utility pole that had been leaning precariously has a companion, a new pole ready to take the load of wires that run along Chapel Street.
It’s a 10-minute walk home, time enough to let the words and ideas do a little dance in my head. What would I have done, for example, if our power had come back on the third day, as it had for the rest of the folks on the street. As it was, we were reconnected on the 11th day, so there was plenty to do around the house, literally keeping the home fires burning. Had the electricity come back sooner, where would I have been? At the Senior Center, making pots of spaghetti? Dunno.
Well, yeah, I know.
Hi Kark aka YNB, I tried to respond to a previous blog and my name, email address and web site are printed (see above) from the previous message, but the text did not come through. You mentioned the storm and I took the opportunity to write about the 1938 hurricane that took place in Central Mass. when I was 16 years old. I went on to mention that the story is in my book, Chair City of the World. I also mentioned that people can get more info by going to my web site (see above). Connie