70 Degree Snow Day

[Meredith Novak]

If you have had any time to see news lately, you have heard about the ice storm and power outages across the middle of the country. I wrote an essay about our team's experience over the last few days. I hear a lot about snow days, but not 70 degree ones!

It was seventy degrees in our town yesterday and our schools are out for the fifth consecutive “snow day.” What seemed like a routine, if nasty, ice storm has turned out to be an unprecedented disaster in this mid-section of the country. My neighborhood, my town looks like it has been clear-cut. Where once stood large and beautiful hardwood trees, there is now scarred land and muddy roads. I would estimate that at least a third of our lovely trees have been destroyed and the majority of the ones left are severely damaged.

The electric utility company announced today that half of their customers have power; that means half of us still do not, have not for a week now. There are three hundred and fifty people living in my church and thousands of hot meals being cooked in the kitchen there and delivered to the surrounding communities for distribution. We wake to the sound of chainsaws and sleep to the hum of generators. My children have spent the last six nights sleeping in the living room floor in front of the fireplace because it is too cold in their upstairs rooms. We are fine and comfortable, only inconvenienced. I am hearing stories of elderly people without heat or food for days and I can only imagine the horrors the days to come may reveal.

It is week five of the build season and today we are having our first official Bomb Squad meeting in nine days. A handful of students and mentors have worked many late hours to try to catch up on our robot construction and salvage our season. Most of the people dragging in to our shop do not have power at their homes, but we are all grateful we got it restored to our work area after three days. The Baxter engineers have also been working to get the plant up and running after having no power for days. I’ve never known the plant to shut down except for scheduled maintenance.

All of us have property damage, trees and power lines on our driveways. One of the mentors came in yesterday afternoon after spending the day repairing a hole in his roof. He had his small children in tow because his wife is a nurse and has to work extra shifts and nights in the emergency room. My older children watched the babies. It is dangerous and ridiculous to have toddlers around power tools, but everyone understands how desperately we need their dad there to help. The team leader has become the head babysitter. Although this is not in her job description, there are no complaints.

I try to give a picture of what is going on here, not to grumble, not to excuse what might be one of our less-than-stellar competition seasons. The students we work to inspire and encourage are the ones who will develop the utility technologies to keep this kind of tragedy from happening forever. The team we represent is bigger than our personal discomfort – the most valuable thing a FIRST team can possess is an identity, a history that transcends any single year’s obstacles. In all the frantic discussions of “what are we going to do?” no one ever suggested giving up.

Meredith Novak, Mentor, Team 16