As I hear more stories and see more pictures of what happened here in Vermont as a result of Hurricane Irene, I think that the storm is certainly going to be the subject of many family stories that will be handed down to future generations. There are people who are isolated in their mountain villages because all roads in and out have been destroyed by floodwaters. There are folks with out of state license plates from Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York who came up here when they were evacuated from their homes. I am sure that they thought that they would be able to ride out the storm up here in the mountains, but many of them are now in the same boat as people back in their home towns – either flooded out, without electricity, or both. Natural disasters are monumental occasions, and every family has a different account of what happened during them.
Do you know whether your ancestors lived through any natural disasters and what their experience was like? They may have written about it in diaries, or perhaps they just passed their stories along by word of mouth. Hopefully the stories have survived in some form, but now would be a good time to write or type those stories and any from the present generation so that they can be preserved in a tangible format.
For example, people that have lived in Vermont for their entire lives may be now be comparing the flooding that has occurred over the past few days with other major floods that happened in 1927 and 1936. If you are unsure whether your ancestors experienced any natural disasters, you can look for disasters in their home state during the time that they lived there on Gendisasters.com. If you find any information there about things that happened during the lifetimes of some of your living relatives, you may want to ask them whether they remember them. You just might find out some fascinating family stories about how they survived one or more natural disasters.
Photo by kconnors on morguefile.com.
