(Host) Commentator Deborah Lee Luskin is a novelist, essayist, and
educator who believes in the benefits of foreign travel – which is
exactly what saved Brattleboro’s New England Youth Theater from Tropical
Storm Irene’s nasty flood waters.
(Luskin) When the flood
waters of Tropical Storm Irene washed through downtown Brattleboro last
August, the buildings along Flat Street were worst hit, with water
carrying mud filling up basements on both sides of the street. On the
north side, Experienced Goods, a popular thrift shop whose proceeds
support our local Hospice, lost its entire inventory and sustained
damage to its walls and floors, and all the new winter shoes at Sam’s
Outdoor Outfitters were ruined. On the south side, the side closest to
the raging Whetstone Brook, the historic Latchis Theater lost its
electrical, heating and ventilation systems, and two of their tenants
were flushed out as well: Adivasi, an import store, lost all their
artisan textiles to the mud. Shram and Alyssa Bhanti, the proprietors,
had no flood insurance and businesses are ineligible for FEMA. But with
the help of volunteers and community support, they’re up and running
again. The Flat Street Brew Pub lost its commercial kitchen and
downstairs dining room. The upstairs bar has finally reopened, but the
restaurant is still shuttered. Ironically, the building closest to
the stream, The New England Youth
Theater, escaped damage.
In 2006, NEYT purchased the
old Tri State Automotive building and drew up plans to renovate this
industrial space into a 144-seat theater with workshops for set and
costume construction, administrative offices, and three classrooms.
Meanwhile, two non-related members of the board of directors just
happened to take two separate vacations to Venice, Italy, at about the
same time. Independently, they both returned to the boardroom with the
same idea: to protect the new theater with the kind of floodgates they’d
seen in Venice. As a result, each of the outside doors to the building
has gates that were lowered before the storm started and which kept
Irene’s waters out of the building.
NEYT did even more. They
buttressed the upstream corner of the building nearest the brook so it
acts like the prow of a ship which water goes around, and they added
both height and weight to the floor, so that the building would both
stay in place and stay dry.
All three classrooms are on the
streamside of the building and have huge
windows, strategically placed higher than usual. During the
flood, water came to within twelve inches of the glass – but didn’t come
in.
By happenstance, an old, industrial weight, chain link
fence about six feet from the water’s usual edge deflected the debris
hurtling downstream from hitting the building, serving as an unplanned
buffer.
Despite all these precautions, the theater did suffer
some loss: the grassy outdoor play area and all the lawn were washed
away.
While rebuilding along riverbanks may not be ideal, in Vermont, we may not have much choice.
If
we do rebuild, we could possibly mitigate damage by following the
example of the New England Youth Theater and combining shipbuilding techniques with the
floodgates of Venice.