Community Corner

Letter: Sandy Exposed Our Lack of Resilience

Resident Katrien Vander Straeten said Hurricane Sandy just continued what Irene started a year ago, and says this should be a call to action in Wayland.

So, we weathered yet another storm. Or did we?

We didn't weather Sandy. Not really. We got some of her peripheral gusts of wind and some rain, but none of it very severe. Yet half our town was without power and our schools were closed for two days due to outages and blocked roads. What was that all about, if not Sandy?

It was global climate change and our lack of local resilience.

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My power went out at the very beginning, before Sandy had even made landfall 300 miles south of us. The smallest of what she could throw at us instantly toppled our infrastructure. Why? Because all she had to do was continue (not finish) what Irene and previous storms had already begun: Trees and branches weakened by those storms had to come down.

That is, there is no resetting each time we go from crisis to crisis. Instead we accumulate risks and dangers. The next storm, however small, might be a major tipping point. The next big one might be utter disaster. Lacking the money, the will or the foresight to put in place a truly resilient infrastructure, a system that can take a hit, we “maintain” what we have for “normal” conditions. The downed wires are restrung, but we won’t be putting them underground any time soon, if at all.

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We are merely treading water, a dangerous undertaking when there are live wires coming down.

When the grid went down, my own grid-tied solar array went down with it. Without batteries (too expensive and environmentally problematic), my household was without power, too. With Solarize Massachusetts we recently added a whopping 130 solar small residential and business arrays in Wayland, Lincoln and Sudbury. We pat ourselves on the back for our success, yet in times of crisis it turns out that it means nothing.

Should we be bothered? Do those couple of days without power matter against the 362 (give or take) good days of energy efficiency and environmental impact reduction? I say, yes. Don't get me wrong, efficiency and environmental benefits are all good and necessary qualities. But in times when climate change and other pressures are impacting us more and more, faster and faster, all our efficiency won’t matter if there’s no resilience buttressing it.

People would rather not think this way. It seems so alarmist and despairing. We have a natural defense against such bad news: We adjust our expectations. Only a few years ago people laughed at the possibility of whole swaths of the country without power for more than a couple of hours.

“This is not a developing country!”

“Natural disasters like those come once in a hundred years!”

Nowadays power outages are predicted days in advance on colorful maps. Personally, I have moved on to worrying about the water supply and gas lines - now major obstacles to recovery in New York and New Jersey. In a few years time, even those might be expected. What’s next? And so we allow ourselves to go, quite happily and quite a long ways, down the rabbit hole.

But some of us are saying: Stop! We can prevent outages, safeguard our water supply, strengthen our community response in emergencies. We can prepare for the “Long Emergency” as well, by putting systems like a strong local economy and local food and energy supplies in place for when they're needed.

First of all we need to realize that we cannot tread water for very long. Climate change is relentless and already a long way ahead of us.

Transition Wayland wants to have a conversation about what this means to us. What can we do to curb climate change and, just as importantly, what can we do in the face of it? How do we adapt and prepare by building resilient infrastructures, communities and individuals?

This is not giving up hope. On the contrary, this is the stubborn hope that our community can thrive in the face of the very real challenges of our time.

Please visit the Transition Wayland website at www.transitionwayland.org, email info@transitionwayland.org, and join us at our next meeting, on Tuesday Nov. 20, 7 p.m.-9 p.m., place TBA.


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