WILMINGTON, Vt. — There is a story Julie Lineberger tells about the ongoing Hurricane Irene cleanup efforts in Wilmington. Downtown, on North Main Street, not a building was safe as flood-waters from the overflowed banks of the nearby Deerfield River swept through the town. Of the gutted businesses was Handknits, a knitting and crochet shop whose website boasts to have “over 1,400 square feet of space full of yarn.” As the water subsided people began to see a peculiar sight: the yarn from Handknits was found all over, spread like a web, and connected throughout the town.
In a town that has been, according to Lineberger, recently divided over issues such as a bill passed in 2009 to appropriate funds for the finishing touches of a local park, the yarn, in her opinion, is metaphorical.
“We are more connected than people realize,” Lineberger said. “What we needed to do is pull together and that is exactly what is happening.”
Lineberger and her husband, Joseph Cincotta, are business partners, owning and operating LineSync Architecture in Wilmington, with Joseph serving as the company’s principal architect.
On Sunday night Cincotta went to bed feeling sick and helpless as he watched his town getting swept away. But the next morning, Cincotta woke up with the plan that he, as an architect, could volunteer his efforts in discerning which damaged buildings were structurally sound.
Cincotta was deputized to the relief squad and along with Assistant State Fire Marshall Brian Johnson, began the task of going from building to building in historic downtown, red-tagging those that were deemed unsafe to enter.
Upon the initial inspections, seven buildings were red-tagged; that number has dropped to four.
On his initial walkthrough, Cincotta saw, amid uprooted telephone poles and large craters still churning water, a building had been completely picked up and swept away. With a 6-inch concrete slab connected underneath, the building acted like a house boat and floated on the four feet of water above street level.
With the bare bones of many buildings exposed, Cincotta has been assessing how the rebuilding can be improved, putting all observations into a report that is currently four pages and growing.
During his inspections Cincotta noticed an astounding structural difference between the buildings that fared better than others. When the water breached the town’s river wall it was the buildings with high windows that survived, while those with low windows on level with the wall suffered severely.
“The water would burst through the windows, in one window and out another and the structure just became part of the water stream.”
According to Rachel Minnery, who chairs the American Institute of Architect’s (AIA) Disaster Assistance Task Force, taking the time to reassess the structures will pay off in the long run.
“Statistics show that with every $1 spent in mitigation of damage, $4 is saved in recovery,” Minnery said. “When we look at the actual life expectancy of many buildings even exceeding 100 years, the investment in mitigation may well pay off with today’s dollars.”
During the relief effort, Cincotta has seen most of the town putting on gloves or masks and doing whatever they could to join and rather than asking for help, doing what they could to help others.
Over the last week, Cincotta and Lineberger have observed relief more so on a community, family level rather than on a state or federal level.
Lineberger has been coordinating aspects of the relief effort from their studio. Their daughter, Jaslyn, who lives in Colorado, while initially feeling helpless from far away, has also joined in the cause and started the Southern Vermont Deerfield Valley Relief Support Network, an open group on Facebook which has quickly garnered over 1,100 members. The group has been instrumental in coordinating relief efforts, supplies, donations and safe routes of travel.
Through this tragedy and the disaster, Cincotta sees an extraordinary experience that will bind the town of Wilmington.
“The worst thing that could have happened, happened on Sunday,” Cincotta said. “The best things that could have happened happened Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.”
Sources
Julie Lineberger and Joseph Cincotta
Handknits website: http://www.handknits.net/store/pc/home.asp
Rachel Minnery: reached through Laura Bedrossian: [email protected]