Randi Marcucio, who was devastated when her home collapsed during Sunday’s catastrophic flooding in Connecticut, received some encouraging news this week that lifted her spirits and gave her hope.
The single mother had her sonograms back on Wednesday after they were discovered around 30 miles away on a beach in Westport. The child, who is currently 3 years old, washed away in the flooded brook near her Oxford house.
In an evening phone interview, Marcucio, an emergency room nurse, said, “Honestly, it felt like holding a piece of my heart, a piece of my soul. Seeing pictures of your child in your womb, and suffering such a great loss, there are no words. I don’t know how to describe it.
On Monday, Nancy Lewis, a stranger, noticed what appeared to be a picture in the sea while strolling along Westport’s Compo Beach with a companion. When she took it up, she noticed that Marcucio’s name was written on a single piece of paper that included two sonograms.
When she searched up the name, she was devastated to see that Marcucio’s house had collapsed. After getting in touch, Lewis met Marcucio next to the collapsed house and gave her the sonograms.
“I saw the devastation and read your story — a single mom, emergency room nurse,” Lewis stated. “I figured you were somebody who’s always caring for other people and I just wanted to see if there was anything that I could do for you, apart from this little sonogram that I found.”
Marcucio hugged the sonograms to her chest as she studied them.
Nestled between Stratford and Milford, on the Housatonic River, Oxford is an inland town situated approximately 20 miles north of the river’s mouth into Long Island Sound. Compo Beach is another fifteen miles to the west. The Housatonic is fed by the creek that is adjacent to Marcucio’s house.
The often peaceful creek became a raging river on Sunday after up to a foot of rain poured, washing away a sizable portion of the land beneath Marcucio’s house. At the time, Rhylee, her son, was staying with her parents. Marcucio spent the night with neighbors after leaving her home.
When Marcucio wasn’t present, a neighbor recorded the moment her Mother’s Day-purchased home collapsed the following day.
She feels fortunate. The storm destroyed bridges, flooded residences and businesses, and necessitated multiple rescues in the communities in the vicinity. In two separate occurrences, two women lost their lives in Oxford after being carried away by floodwaters.
The amount of support Marcucio has received from both the local community and the nation as a whole is overwhelming. About $157,000 has been raised for her and her son through a GoFundMe campaign.
They have a one-year lease on one of the condos owned by a developer. Food and clothing donations have been flooding in. She expressed her gratitude to a wide range of individuals, including Oxford public works teams and employees of nearby construction companies.
According to Marcucio, she contacted with an insurance adjuster, and it doesn’t seem likely that her coverage will cover the destruction of her property. She didn’t think she needed flood insurance, and her house wasn’t in a flood zone.
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She doesn’t think she will be able to rebuild because the majority of the land her house was built on is gone. She hasn’t had much time to consider her future.
There was no plastic bag or box around the sonograms. These are some of the few possessions she was able to retrieve. She didn’t think she needed to remove any vital belongings and didn’t think the house would fall.
However, the previous evening she had taken out her son’s teddy bear. She lost her mother when she was twelve, and she also lost a hairbrush and a bottle of perfume, two priceless souvenirs.
“Unfortunately, there was loss of life in my community, so I cannot complain about the tangible items that were lost,” she stated. “The support from the community is just moving me forward. I haven’t really had the processing time or the grieving time. It’s just really survival mode and things along those lines at this point.”
