I set the receiver down. I looked out the kitchen window. The sky over the valley was the color of old zinc.
By 9:00 p.m., the local fire department, the sheriff’s dive team, and the National Guard were working Cascade Meadows Estates in boats.
Forty-seven luxury homes had water destroying their first floors. Two homes on the lowest lots had floated partly off their foundations. The local baseball field was under nine feet of water.
By midnight, every single HOA resident had been evacuated. Thankfully, no one died.
The next morning, I drove my truck down to the edge of the floodwater. Stellan Brink was already there with his excavator and two flat-bottom boats. The National Guard captain in charge recognized me from a workshop I had taught years ago.
I spent the next eleven days running rescue operations, damage assessments, and structural safety checks in the disaster zone. My daughter mapped the receding hydrology. My niece worked the ham radio.
Heather Lynn was rescued from her second-floor bedroom window by a National Guard boat crew. Her husband had to be pulled from the rafters of his garage after a panicked attempt to save his classic motorcycles.
When they arrived at the community center shelter, wrapped in Red Cross blankets, they looked completely broken.
On day four of the cleanup, Heather’s husband walked up to me at the shelter. He handed me a printed press release on his phone. The State Attorney General had opened a formal investigation into his secret LLC for fraud in connection with environmental litigation. They had discovered his plan to develop the riverbed.
He didn’t argue. He just nodded and walked back to his wife.
On day eleven, the Governor of Vermont called my cell phone. He had seen the satellite damage assessments.
“Rowan,” the Governor asked. “Can this dam be rebuilt, and can you lead the project?”
“Yes to both questions, sir,” I replied.
Ten days later, the town held a public meeting. Over two hundred people attended, representing every household in the valley.
The HOA president, Heather Lynn, was not there. She had resigned in disgrace four days earlier and was quietly packing to move out of state. Her husband was facing a felony fraud charge.
