Autumn Nor'easter and Waterbury Outreach

Last week was the third natural disaster I never expected to experience while in CT. After an earthquake and a hurricane... I expected some winter storms. But one that knocked out our power for three days? No! I'm sure many of you heard about it on the news. But it was really a surprise! Thursday I heard 3/4".... suddenly, Friday we were hearing 6-12"! We heard that we could expect massive power outages due to heavy branches and wet snow. We went to the Home Depot for shovels and to the public library for books Saturday morning, but to be honest, we weren't too worried. We lost cable Saturday evening, which we expected, but went to bed with power. Around midnight, we lost it. My roommate from California and I made her first snowman, and we anxiously waited for power to return... and waited... and waited. It was chaos. Only 6% of the people in our town had power. People were waiting an hour in line to get gas because so many stations were without power. The cashiers at the grocery store were wearing bulky winter coats as they sold non-perishables and batteries. On Sunday we hardly had reception because so many cell phone towers were down. We all sat with our candles and flashlights, reading in the dark and laughing about our situation. We took showers at a fitness center nearby with power. Although Middletown only had a few power lines down, driving in a nearby city was scary. There were trees and power lines down everywhere. I was thankful I never had a reason to drive at night. Our apartment was down to 50 degrees, and we made plans to sleep somewhere else Tuesday night. Thankfully... power was restored to our apartment on Tuesday evening. (Probably one of the few times I was glad to live near the business district.) Unfortunately, one of the AmeriCorps was blocked into their driveway for days because of powers lines and a downed tree. A few other members went until this past weekend without power as well, and one member went 10 days without power. One of the good things to come out of this is that many community members (myself included) reflected on how there are people who struggle daily with finding hot meals, hot showers, and a warm place to sleep.

The health center will be opening a new site in Waterbury this month, and as AmeriCorps members, we've been asked to go door to door to alert the community. Because the health center aims to serve underserved populations of people, we primarily went to low income neighborhoods. We were in groups of four or five with an Access to Care worker (someone who works for the health center to help enroll uninsured people in state health insurance). The homes were large, beautiful Victorian style homes, but it was a huge eye opener, as half of the homes in the neighborhoods were boarded up, many with profanity spray painted on the boards. We saw condemned notes for reasons like raw sewage, and many homes had suffered through a fire, with burnt furniture strewn onto the yard. Maybe I've been watching too much Law & Order... but I was just waiting to trip on a line and see a house burst into flames. While it was a bit intimidating, we had many positive interactions with people. One man I spoke to put his hands up in the air and yelled "Woohoo!" at least three times in our conversation, as I described that the health center would accept his insurance. Another time, this little old lady was yelling at me from down the street, 'Hey! Hey! What are you doing here?' When I went over to speak to her, she was very sweet, and seemed to be the type of person who had lived in the neighborhood before it became abandoned. Overall, I feel that the community health center will make a positive difference in the community.