This year’s Fourth of July also marked the 250th anniversary of when the country declared independence, and our Island met the moment with fanfare befitting the occasion. Islanders marched through Edgartown and Aquinnah in celebratory parades and watched dazzling fireworks, and there was a collective reflection on what freedom really means today in our country and on our Island. .
We met this time of celebration and reflection amid a heat wave that quickly turned into a deluge of rain that brought stress and strain to the whole Island, with long lines of traffic, occasional power outages, spotty internet and cell phone connectivity, and a feeling that this year was just far more chaotic than any other years in memory.
So it feels like an appropriate time to remind our Island community to take a deep breath and find our inner calm before continuing what promises to be a busy summer with more unpredictable weather and more strains on the infrastructure of an increasingly crowded Island that feels as if it may be reaching a breaking point.
The weather seemed to reflect the tumult of the weekend, with rough seas and high winds that forced Steamship Authority ferries to divert trips from Oak Bluffs to Vineyard Haven. In a cascading effect, those ferry schedule changes contributed to the painfully slow traffic and congestion across the Island, but particularly around Five Corners and down Beach Road.
Congestion also took place on other parts of the Island, like the intersections of Beach Road and Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road at the Triangle in Edgartown, and various smaller ferry lines suspended all service for weather. We heard of instances of high tension on the road as people desperately tried to get to their appointments or meet the ferries. In the congestion, there was even a point when a Tisbury Police officer was struck by a vehicle while directing traffic. Luckily, nobody was hurt. And on Tuesday, there was the all-too-familiar flooding of Beach Road, which happens several times each year. Some businesses closed early for the day, waiting out the closed road, and several vehicles broke down in the flooded areas.
The lead-up to the Fourth saw explosive headlines as well. There was a hoax bomb threat at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital that forced a massive police response — a stunt that wasted time and resources — and what seems to have been an irresponsible use of illegal fireworks caused a beach grass blaze to expand to 100 feet long and 500 feet wide in Oak Bluffs. To help visualize that, 100 feet is about the length of an adult blue whale, and 500 feet is around one-and-a-half football fields.
A mishmash of unexpected events, high temperatures, and hard rain are all par for the course on the Island during the summer. But there is a need to ponder that this year may in fact be different, and we may collectively be reaching a tipping point that will require us all to put our heads together to find a sustainable path forward. We still have the rest of July and all of August to get through. There’s plenty of great things this summer to be excited for, but let’s take a breath before moving onward with the summer, and let’s start thinking more purposefully about how we are going to make the Island more sustainable.