Many communities are planning weekend events to help residents clean up from the Oct. 29 snowstorm.
View full sizeFrom left, Chiara Esposito, 9; her mother Faith Esposito; her sister Carleigh Esposito, 7; and friends Bretonya Fontaine, 5, and Logan Fontaine, 8, sit in their "sleeping quarters" at the emergency shelter at Quarry Hill Community School in Monson on Nov. 3. The Esposito family lost their home to the tornado, and in the recent October nor'easter lost power at their rented home and had to stay at the shelter.Five months after a tornado decimated parts of Brimfield, Monson, Springfield, Wilbraham and West Springfield, the communities were hit again two weeks ago on Saturday - this time by a crippling pre-Halloween nor’easter that downed trees and wires throughout the region and left residents in the dark for days.
The scene was eerily similar to the tornado’s destruction, as trees and wires littered streets, rendering them impassable. But this time, everything was covered in snow.
“Here we go again,” Wilbraham selectmen chairman Patrick J. Brady said about the Oct. 29. snowstorm.
Most of the communities opened emergency shelters, to give weather-weary residents places to seek refuge.
In Brimfield, the First Congregational Church was renewed as the hub of recovery efforts once its power was restored. Volunteers made food for residents without electricity and offered a place where they could bide their time as they waited - and waited - for the power to turn back on.
It took more than a week for some communities to get power back completely.
“I think what’s important for people to understand is that Brimfield was hit by two tornadoes (and) Hurricane Irene,” Mary Roy, assistant director of disaster relief at the church, said on Nov. 3. “But, this is an absolutely debilitating disaster where the whole town has been affected. The amount of work the volunteers have done here is heroic.”
Gina Lynch, the director of the church’s disaster relief center, said the volunteers had been talking about how things were finally slowing down after the tornado when the snow stormed through.
“We’re a really strong town,” Lynch said. “The people are just pulling together.”
Volunteers brought food to the emergency shelter at Brimfield Elementary School, while others toured tornado-damaged properties to check them for additional damage after the snow. Volunteers also made lunches for the utility crews working to restore power, she said.
Christine and Jerry A. Chaiffre had been staying at the shelter with their sons, Arthur, 10; Hunter, 9; and Ryan, 7, because it was too cold at their Warren Road home with no power. They were going to the church in the daytime, where Jerry was doing crossword puzzles and the boys gathered snow for the volunteer effort and for a snowball fight.
Christine Chaiffre said they wanted to go home, and were tired of staying at the shelter on cots.
View full sizeMary Roy, assistant director of the disaster relief center at Brimfield's First Congregational Church, stands inside the church on Nov. 3, five days after the historic October snowstorm left numerous Brimfield residents without power.Lynch and her family lost electricity at their home and slept at the shelter, which closed Nov. 5. Staying there gave her a better understanding of “what the tornado people are going through,” she said.
Brett F. Minney, who was inside his mobile home on Hollow Road when the tornado spun it in the air before it crashed to the ground, praised the people at the church for continuously helping the Brimfield residents.
Minney called the latest weather setback “horrible.”
“I’ve been living this for five months. Not much has changed,” Minney said.
Over the line in Monson, people were bustling in and out of the emergency shelter at Quarry Hill Community School on Nov. 3. Some, like Judie Newberry, stopped in to take a hot shower.
Newberry, a member of the “street angels” tornado volunteer team, rattled off the list of epic weather that the region has experienced - from the tornado that tore a 39-mile path from Westfield to Charlton to a mid-summer microburst and tropical storm.
“I’m waiting for the locusts,” Newberry said.
Faith Esposito was staying at the Quarry Hill shelter with her family. Their Washington Street home was leveled by the tornado, and they now rent a home on Stafford Road, which lost power during the storm.
“We’re pretty familiar with this place,” Esposito said about the shelter. “We’re just going with the flow these days.”
The Monson shelter ceased operations on Nov. 6.
Monson was already coping with a $6 million tornado bill when the October snowstorm struck, creating another $1 million in expenses.
While the town expects to receive 75 percent reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for tornado costs, the remaining 25 percent is still a concern.
“It really is a long-term process. What can you do? Everyone is tired and we’re going to run out of money,” Monson town administrator Gretchen E. Neggers said.
In the days after the snowstorm, Neggers said, “I’m fairly tired of historic weather events.”
View full sizeBrett F. Minney talks about dealing with the latest weather event - the October nor'easter - outside First Congregational Church in Brimfield on Nov. 3.Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno said the tornado was “a devastating swath that affected one-third of the city,” but the snow storm compromised the majority of the city. The storm was a massive disruption to residents and businesses, said Sarno, adding he will meet with FEMA representatives to discuss it.
“We might be knocked down a little bit, but we will continue to get back on our feet,” Sarno said.
In Wilbraham, which was not only hit hard by the tornado, but experienced more damage from the microburst, Brady said, “People are cleaning up. You begin with picking up the first branch, that’s all you can do.”
“The Wilbraham residents show a great deal of character, in my opinion. They are very resilient,” Brady said.
Families were helping each other out during this latest weather event, he said. Those with generators were hosting two to three families in their homes, and making dinners for others, he said. Brady said some people just finished cleaning up from the tornado, then the nor’easter struck.
“We haven’t even thought about how to pay for this,” Brady said.
In West Springfield, residents of the Merrick section, where two people were killed during the tornado, coped with the blizzard.
Mohammed Najeeb, long-term recovery coordinator for natural disasters at Lutheran Social Services of New England on Main Street, said his clients are having trouble emotionally coping with a blizzard on top of the tornado.
“It is getting them more frustrated. They are worried about winter coming because they think it is going to be like this all winter long,” Najeeb said of the refugees his agency has settled in the area.
Ned Hubbard, who owns West Side Sign at 442 Main St., said he’s ready to move to Florida. “I’m so sick of the weather. I’m 62 years old and I’ve never seen a snowstorm do this much damage.”
“This is worse than the tornado,” Hubbard added.
“We’re still trying to catch up from the tornado,” Erik N. Hudson, of 580 Main St., said of the seven nights his family spent in a motel after the June 1 disaster. “That was $200 a day.”
Hudson, 37, did not lose power because of the blizzard, but his family played Good Samaritan this time around, hosting four adult friends and their three children overnight because they did not have any heat in their Springfield homes.
As for the double whammy of a tornado then a blizzard, Hudson said, “We’re used to it I guess. You don’t have much of a choice. You gotta do what you gotta do.”
Staff reporter Sandra Constantine contributed to this report