I did not think that Hurricane Irene was going to affect Vermont very much. The news was full of apocalyptic predictions for New York City and Boston, but Vermont only ever gets the tail ends of these things, and I was not worried at all. I did not fill the bathtub with water (drinking tub water is gross) and I did not stock up on supplies. Then the storm hit, and we lost power and water.
When I woke up this morning, our lawn had acquired a new water feature (I’ve always wanted a pond!) and the beaver dam was completely covered with water as the stream overflowed its banks. The weather reports told us that the river would be rising several more feet by this afternoon, so we decided to evacuate.
Now again, I was still not taking this stuff as seriously as perhaps I should have, and so for my first evacuation fail, I did not bring anything with me when I left. No change of clothes, no toothbrush, nothing. I was more concerned with getting out. It never occurred to me that we might not be able to get back again.
The second big fail was my not filling the car with gas ahead of time. I turned the key, saw the gas light come on, and silently punched myself in the face in my head. We pulled out of the driveway and headed south. We got less than half a mile before we hit a completely flooded out road, so we turned around and headed the other way. Sadly, that way was closed as well. With every single road closed we took the only remaining option and went up the mountain, completely in the wrong direction.
With gas running out and stress levels rising with the water, we passed some officers closing the road we were on, going back towards Richmond. So now we couldn’t get back even if we wanted to, and we were wandering around with no phone signal up on a mountain. Luckily we did find a gas station, so one crisis was averted.
By going the crazy back way, we eventually made it to Nini’s house (on the very dry fourth floor), which was when we realized that we had forgotten Ruby’s epilepsy medicine, and not only that, but we had forgotten to give it to her this morning as we were rushing out the door. We suck at evacuating.
Thank goodness the people at the pharmacy know us. They gave us some spare medicine to get us through, and we are now all safe and dry. I am assuming that our house is too. I guess we’ll see tomorrow, when we attempt to devacuate.