Nearly a year after the devastating ice storm in northern Michigan, residents gathered in Gaylord on Thursday for a night of storytelling about the extreme weather they experienced.
Sixteen farmers, foresters and residents recalled harrowing experiences of the storm but also shared stories of communities supporting each other in the aftermath.
The event was hosted by the Climate Action Campaign, a coalition of local and state organizations advocating for policies to address climate change.
This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
“What I remember most from this isn't the destruction, it's the way people showed up,” said Aaron Beach, an operations leader at Treetops Resort in Gaylord. The resort hosted emergency response crews that helped restore power to the local area.
For some residents, downed power lines and blocked roads threatened access to medical care. More than an inch and a half of ice collected on tree branches, power lines, homes and vehicles.
Resident Patrick King was injured during the storm and called 911. Emergency responders said help would be on the way, armed with chainsaws to cut through the debris littering King’s road. King and his wife told them not to come because others might be in worse condition.
“There's people who might be having heart attacks, having strokes,” he said. His wound was “no reason to divert a crew and have them sit there for the hours it's going to take to get to us.” Instead, King got medical help from a neighbor who is a retired nurse.
Several speakers looked at the work ahead for recovery, while calling attention to how ice storms like last year’s could become more common because of climate change. Research suggests the freezing line in Michigan is shifting north, which means places where snow is more common could see more icy rain in the future.
That worries Charlevoix resident Lesley Pritchard, who said federal rollbacks to climate regulations and environmental protections are “frightening” as extreme weather worsens.
“This White House and this Congress have continued to gut the agencies and the research and eliminate the protections we fought decades to establish,” she said.
Foresters at the event spoke about the long-term effects of the ice storm on the region’s trees. The storm impacted about 3 million acres of trees in 30 counties.
“The overall economic value of the forest is and will be degraded. And we'll see that for many decades in the future,” said Ivan Witt, a Gaylord-based private forestry consultant. But he said the destruction isn’t permanent, and recovery will happen even if it takes a generation.
Donna Farvard, state organizing director for the Climate Action Campaign, said the goal of the event was to let people share what their lives have been like since the storm, and speak directly to elected officials that were also present. Leaders from the Michigan State Police and a representative from U.S. Senator Gary Peters’ team attended the event.
“Our hope is that the government officials in attendance take these stories back with them and have a renewed charge to advocate for the assistance the community needs to not only better prepare for future storms, but also to advocate for policies that will address climate change,” she said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency denied Michigan’s appeal for more disaster aid related to the ice storm in October, and Farvard hoped that stories from impacted residents would show the long-term effects of the decision.
Despite all the devastation, Beach, the operations leader from Treetops Resort, compared the community’s strength during and after the ice storm to buffaloes.
“Because when a storm comes, buffaloes don't run away from it," he said. "They run into it, they face it head on together and they get through it faster.”
