Stories From Ashore: Flood Adventures
At Envision Resilience, we support the exploration of science-based, design-led, comprehensive explorations of how we can adapt to sea-level rise and we seek to amplify the anecdotal accounts of climate change in our community. In this series, Stories from Ashore, we will share stories of local Nantucketers and their experience with climate change, introduce you to people in our community who are imagining their way forward with increased water on their properties and discuss pathways forward. What will be your response to climate change?
1950s Brant Point Flood (Photo courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association P9535)
By Julie Kever
I was too young to personally remember seeing the old black car, standing stoically out in the freezing, wind-whipped water of an early 1950’s winter storm, but the photograph says a lot about the storms endured by island year-rounders living on Brant Point.
What I do recall are at least two trips in the Coast Guard’s amphibious ‘Duck’ as it was called, to round up the winter families and get them out of the rising nor’easter sea water enveloping our homes. I thought the first experience was such an adventure, piling into this big boat-on-wheels with our neighbors, to be delivered several streets over, away from the sea water, then parsed out to friends until the storm had passed. As there were a lot of kids in my family, we went in groups of two or three to spend a night with whoever was willing, until the weather calmed and Dad did his own plumbing and heating repairs to get the heat working again.
We loved playing checkers or Candyland with others, sipping hot chocolate and being tucked into guest beds or made-up couches. We headed to school the next day, up on Academy Hill far from the flooded Point and found out at the end of classes if we were going back to our host homes, or walking the usual route home to Willard Street. We hoped for and liked the idea of another night of special treatment!
Photo courtesy of Julie Kever, winter storm 1951-1952 the family car frozen in the flooded Brant Point neighborhood.
The most memorable rescue I remember, was when I was 11 and we passed my new little sister over to the Coast Guard crew in our wicker clothes basket (her second adventure in life, having been born only two weeks earlier, in the January snow just outside the hospital). That trip had challenges with so many neighbors packed into the wide, rumbling Duck, as they slowly gathered the year-rounders up from flooded streets. There was a firefighter helping who had gotten so cold from the winter water, I recall helping someone to rub his hands and feet, so he wouldn’t get frostbite. Then, when the vehicle had reached over-capacity, and they were looking to see who they’d need to go back for; there was an older woman at her door screaming for them to not leave her, but they couldn’t fit anyone else in until they’d dropped us off. I asked later if they’d gone back and was assured they had.
Once it flooded while we were at school, so that when we were walking home and got to the corner of North Beach Street, we saw nothing but water stretching the length of Easton toward the Point. As we wondered what to do next, we heard a neighbor calling us over to her house, where we were to await instructions on who was going where for the night. Another unexpected escapade!
I think it was after the water went down from that flood, and we got home to my mother cleaning up floors, with my dad emerging from the crawl space under the kitchen where he’d repaired another pipe, that I realized it wasn’t fun for the adults and maybe we should tone down the chatter about how much we’d enjoyed being rescued and treated like special guests where we’d spent the night.
There was probably much more we didn’t know about the effects of the saltwater on the yards, homes and cars, a lot of damage that needed attention, time and money. I know we families who lived in the low flooding areas year-round, experienced first-hand what seasonal homeowners only got reports on from caretakers, who then took care of repairs. As an adult I see that if you choose to live in a place where nature will deliver repeat weather extremes, a lot more thought needs to go into all aspects of living with the consequences, and that it isn’t always an enjoyable adventure.
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Julie worked for 13 years with the Nantucket Historical Association and loves to see folks interested and learning about island history and the old crafts. She’s been with the Nantucket Preservation Trust for three years now, and sees a continuing link there to keeping history alive, mostly through older buildings, which pulls in so much about the crafts of our forebears on this unique island. She is a 12th-generation islander with 10 siblings, loves the natural fauna and flora here and accepts the bounty of native beach plums every year to make her favorite jelly.
