Rich In Water

Newtown has always been a town that is rich in water, but its historic affluence in this regard has rarely exceeded the wealth of wetness that rained down on the town this week, producing record surpluses of H2O in our lakes, rivers, streams, parks, roads, yards, drains, basements, and boots. So great was this fortune that for a couple of days early in the week, our community was able to pass along more than 50,000 cubic feet of water every second over the Stevenson dam to our neighboring towns in the river valley to the south. They were, quite literally, overwhelmed by the gift.

Those of us subject to the elemental prerogatives of New England weather must, for sanity’s sake, take a sardonic view of our lot. It’s not funny when you have six feet of water in your basement, as some Shady Rest homes had Monday, or when your car, or furnace, or electrical system is ruined by a flood. But repeatedly, in our travels around a water-whipped Newtown this week, we found that people were not falling apart in the face of tangible losses, which were considerable for some. Instead, people fell together to cope with the sodden consequences of a particularly ruinous week of wind and water — and often with surprising good humor and equanimity. Neighbors in particularly ravaged neighborhoods traded battle stories with each other, and offered the comfort of commiseration and a spare utility pump when they could.

Everywhere that trouble flooded into our domestic lives during the heavy rains, however, the most welcome of visitors were the scores of fire company volunteers who worked all day and all night responding to hundreds of calls for help from homeowners who were in over their heads in their individual efforts to stem the tide. The work the volunteers did was cold, wet, and dirty, and they did it expertly, efficiently, and with all due sympathy and courtesy to those who had asked for their help.

Because these volunteers also have their own jobs, their own personal lives, with their own fair share of wet basements, all of their work on our behalf is overtime work performed not for time-and-a-half, but for free.

Newtown is rich in many things, but none is dearer than its many volunteers.