Help Sweet Sound recover from accident.

My name is John Brawley and I own Sweet Sound Aquaculture in Charlotte, Vermont where I have been farming shrimp for three years. On January 14, 2022 an extreme wind event caused repeated power outages and surges which resulted in the failure of the farm's aeration systems which are critical for shrimp survival. Though this system has proven redundancy built in, this particular event caused a failure of a VFD (variable frequency drive) that simply could not handle the rapid and repeated fluctuations in power. This caused an 8 hour disruption of aeration to the shrimp pools. According to the power company there were two power lines some ways away that had rubbed together causing the current to go out of phase. But it wasn't severe enough to trigger the automatic notification to me.

This event resulted in a 100% loss of all the shrimp that were being raised at the farm. This includes about 500 lbs of market-ready shrimp and 100 lbs of the next group of small shrimp (nursery shrimp). We now need to start over so that we can have shrimp ready for the markets in May and throughout the year.

Funds raised through Gofundme will support (1) payments of continued operational costs during a four month period without revenue (electricity, heat), (2) additional post larval hatchery shrimp (babies), and (3) the installment of additional emergency monitoring equipment so that this type of even will not occur again.

Thank you for any support you can provide.