|
7/23/2023
Hello GMHA members, friends and family – I left work on Friday with thoughts of an update to all of you with the completed work on the facility after the July 10th storm.
Instead, you may have heard that last Friday night GMHA experienced another flooding event. Unlike the earlier July statewide rain event, this one was more localized. A series of thunderstorms lined up over GMHA to drop over five inches of rain in three hours. The resulting flash flood was more disastrous than the flooding ten days before. The flood waters came up faster, ran swifter and deeper than before.
All the work that had been completed the previous week was washed away, and more.
The Connemara Show had started to move in earlier on Friday ahead of the storm. Ponies were moved out of C Barn to Upwey Barn as water came into their stalls. The dumpster that was behind the workshop now resides stuck under the car bridge at Upwey. The porta potty from the lunging ring is now halfway down the stream in the Upwey arena and another one is in the retention basin by Morgan Hill Road.
All the hard work on the roads, parking areas and grassy edges is washed out and we will have to start from scratch again.
The XC and Jump fields have another layer of sand, silt and rocks covering them with some deeper channels running through them creating dangerous conditions. The Dust Bowl Arena will need a complete rebuild.
As a result of all this damage, CVDA cancelled their two-day dressage show and I limited the Connemara Show to in-hand classes in the White ring, only.
I have asked that the GMHA Summer Dressage Days Show for next weekend be cancelled (July 28-30).
In addition, the GMHA facility, in its entirety, and Member Trail loops are closed to riders and visitors until at least August 7th. Any shows, clinics, members days during that time frame are cancelled. This will result in the cancellation of the CTR, Pleasure and Starter rides scheduled for August 5-6 and the Wheel Runners Clinic on August 1st.
I don’t make this decision lightly as we are in the busiest time of the year, but it is for everyone’s safety.
The scope and breadth of the repairs all over the property will require our undistracted attention so we can get them completed in the next two weeks. Over the next couple of days GMHA staff and Board will work on how we can reschedule, or modify the cancelled events, following the two week time frame allowing them to run safely.
We will have further information from the Board later today, or tomorrow, on how to support GMHA during this time. If nothing else, GMHA teaches resilience and patience. We will need lots of both in the near future and I thank you in advance!
Bruce Perry, Executive Director
|
