NOT PROPERLY SITUATED ANYMORE? POUNDED AGAIN, COASTAL MASSACHUSETTS TOWN OF SCITUATE MAY CONSIDER A RETREAT DURING TO THE FREQUENCY OF THE BIG STORMS
JANUARY. 28, 2015
SCITUATE, Mass. — Kris Carroll stood in her living room on Wednesday, frozen by disbelief as much as the cold. One wall of what used to be the living room was open to the ocean. The wooden floor was covered in a thick slush, dotted with shards of glass from windows that lay broken on the floor.
Several weeks ago, Ms. Carroll, 42, who is renting the house overlooking the ocean while she builds one farther inland, had optimistically written “2015 is the year!” on her refrigerator. Tuesday’s blizzard, however, had other ideas. As the storm lashed this town with screeching winds that whipped up the waves, it tore off the porch and ripped away part of the wall of the living room and the bedroom above.
Her street was one of six in Scituate rendered impassable during this week’s blizzard, which left some towns along the coast with more structural damage than they had seen in years. “I’m glad the house is still technically in one piece,” said Ms. Carroll, who was trying to salvage clothes from the house, which sits on pilings and is protected by a tall sea wall. The supports, however, were no match for the blizzard.
Residents of Scituate this week took up the familiar task of cleaning up and digging out. Some wondered how much more they could take, and whether major changes could help. Credit Michael Dwyer/Associated Press
Unlike towns farther to the south, Scituate, on the Atlantic coast about 30 miles southeast of Boston, is not protected by Cape Cod directly to its east, and regularly feels the brunt of the wind and water. The town lost houses during the famous Blizzard of 1978 and then took a hit in the so-called Perfect Storm of 1991. Parts of the town were flooded twice in 2013, and a nor’easter brought more water just last fall.
Town officials and many Scituate residents have grown concerned about the frequency of the damage. “These storms used to come once every 20 years,” a selectwoman, Maura Curran, said. “Now, we get them pretty much every year.”
Across New England on Wednesday, residents began to dig out from the latest blizzard, which left record amounts of snow. Travel bans were lifted and cars started to crawl along the roads, many of which had still not been plowed. The Boston subway system cranked back and airports around the region reopened. On Nantucket, utility crews worked to restore power to the island’s 12,800 residents. In Scituate, residents took up the familiar task of cleaning up and digging out, with families liberating buried driveways and utility crews chipping ice off impotent power lines. Some here wondered how much more they could take, and whether major changes might stave off further destruction.
Officials did not immediately say how many homes had been damaged. But the building commissioner, Neil Duggan, said it was the most damage he had seen since 1991, when the area was hit by weather that is dramatized in the Sebastian Junger book “The Perfect Storm.”
At one point during Tuesday’s storm, part of the sea wall near Ms. Carroll’s home was breached, as was a large section of another wall in nearby Marshfield, damaging several homes. Gov. Charlie Baker said that the snow from the storm Monday and Tuesday was “lighter and fluffier” than expected, leading to fewer power failures.
One solution is to firm up the sea wall, said Jay Savage, 45, a high school English teacher who lives near Ms. Carroll and remembered 2013, when he and his family, including a newborn baby, had to evacuate twice within about a month because of water.
During a meeting Wednesday with state officials, including Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, the town administrator, Patricia A. Vinchesi, said that solutions needed to be much broader.
“Just repairing and repairing the sea walls — it isn’t a permanent solution with the ocean coming ever closer to us,” Ms. Vinchesi said. The town needs to consider a managed retreat, she said, moving houses farther away from the coast or demolishing them in response to rising sea levels, eroding beaches and intensifying storms, including the possible buyout of homeowners along the shore.
One resident, Kathy Loftus, said, “At some point, if it is not sustainable to continue to do this, what are the answers?”
“We, at some point, will need to figure out, does it make sense to get bought out?” said Ms. Loftus, who weathered the storm in a hotel rather than her house because she feared impassable roads could turn her neighborhood into an island. The town had turned off power to her home, and Ms. Loftus was heading there to see if her pipes had frozen.
Many considered the repetitive storms, in a way, part of the town’s character.
“Living by the ocean is something that you just cannot explain — it’s special, it’s exciting,” said Bill Graham, 69, who seemed unfazed by the floodwater that had washed around his house.
“Scituate has been a hardened seacoast for a long time,” he added. “We’ve had sea walls, we built all these structures based on the sea walls, and it’s too late to turn back. It would be abandoning the entire town.”