Guess we got lucky, some would say. We didn't have her as a hurricane, "just" an overhyped tropical storm. And it wasn't even that impressive as a TS goes, wind wise. So here is what we've got:

-3 dead
-2 MIA (known)
-every single major road has places where it is out, 260+ and a extensive stretch of one of the three E-W main roads doesn't exist any more (Rt 4) while both of the others have smaller outages
-35 bridges closed, several of them are just gone
-several electrical substations submerged, I've heard that one is just gone
-about 10% of the population lost power, half of those still don't and about half of THEM will be several weeks without (and most of those folks have well water- no power = no running water)
-Rutland, Montpelier, Barre and other downtowns had extensive flooding.
-11 towns are completely cut off by bridge outages or flooding
-several dams which are dangerously full, with a few small ones having failed
-extensive petro and ag chem contamination of waterways
-several public water and sewage treatment facilities under water

Things I haven't heard a lot about are live stock and crops, but I passed several farms this morning and this evening. I saw one barn that had water up to its second story, others with water up to the half way point, and several corn fields where the corn was less than a foot above water if that much. Keeping in mind that a lot of farmers lost their original planting in a series of floods this spring, so this is the replacement planting which was short and stunted to begin with. The last cut of hay was still in fields for a few farms Saturday and Friday, so that might be lost for several folks. Upshot of that is that there is possibly lost live stock, lost milking machines and lost feed crops- those lead to lost farms.

There were also a number of businesses that already rebuilt once this year.

The thing I haven't heard anything about is the ski areas, if they lost lifts or had major erosion damage to the slopes. Thats a lot of money that is up in the air.

And this was after floods this spring that were the worst I'd seen in my life at that point, which took out several bridges, power lines, road beds, homes, barns, crops...

All of this in a state with a population of less than three quarters of a million, which has been kicked in the groin for the past 10 years economically, which doesn't have a billion dollar budget.

Yeah, "just" a tropical storm.

I am currently listening to an interview with the Governor- he's not sure how many of the old covered bridges are left.

Thats a very specific turn of phrase, and it's kinda scary, that suggests that there is more than were being counted by the transportation agency are out. *shakes head* There were towns that didn't recover fully from the '28 flood for a decade. If the rebuild is that slow, it won't matter, those towns will be empty.

Gah, my heart goes out for Vermont. I used to bum around that state a lot during my years at RPI. There was a bagel place in downtown Bennington, right on the river there. The DW and I used to drive there on nice fall Saturdays to have their bagels. It's probably gone...

Glad you're safe, friend. How's your family doing in all this?
-Blast

My brother actually rolled down to NYC with part of his rescue squad on Friday along with some of their water rescue gear, he's good. I think they were to come back tonight. I won't comment on sending VT and NH and upstate NY resources to NYC and NJ when every model had this thing rolling up either the Connecticut River or Champlain valleys, although I think there must have been a way to get teams from out west on to Gaurd C-130s....

Neither of us have gotten a call back from our folks, but cell coverage their way is sub par at the best of times and it's pretty much a given than their landline and power is out for a day or two at a minimum. If there was something really wrong, the fire chief would have called us both by now, so back up message methods are in use.

And yeah, anything in downtown Bennington probably isn't looking so good right now. part of their water supply is suspected to be contaminated but not all of it, and they have a few hundred feet of broken pipe through their entire system. They have the tanks and the little pumps, so assuming no fires break out and they can get the emergency patches done, they should have the hospital and schools should have water late tuesday or wensday, but anyone on the higher ground is going to have to have water trucked in for a while. Their big water kicker is that the filtration plant main line ran under a bridge that used to be part of Rt 9- no bridge any more, fell down and smashed the water main, so even once they do have water I'm not sure how long the boil water orders will last. From what I've heard, the contractors who were working on the bypass have agreed to go into recovery and stabilization mode for the foreseeable.

Montpelier almost was a total loss- it was turning into a debate between openning the spill ways on a flood control damn all the way and just trying to drain the pressure in a semi-controlled manner, or risk the dam and not put another four-five feet of water running down State St. Didn't come down to that point, which is a good thing, but I don't think you could get anything not made by John Deere, IH or Catepiller down it this morning.

We apparently have some bridges so badly undercut that the inspectors didn't even want to try to walk across them. It wouldn't be so bad if they were on back roads, but some of these are on numbered state highways. I'm thinking of one in particular that is right by a high school- if it isn't usable, then there is going to be some interesting shuffling becuase it is a 50 mile detour.

Right now I'm hampered by having to go on the mass media for data, I'm not getting much first hand ground truth. I don't know anything about the Connecticut River side of the state or NH, for example.

Am I the only Vermonter left here?

If Vermont HAD been hit by the hurricane, WITH the wind, WITH the flooding, WITH tornadoes, it would probably have been scoured right off the map!

It's horrible enough as it is. All those poor people! It's been said several times at ETS that the belongings don't matter as long as you've got your lives, but what happens when that's all that's left -- no belongings, no home, no car, no roads, no job, no local businesses, just the clothes on your back?

How do you just pick up and start over?

In Catskill Communities, Survivors Are Left With Little but Their Lives

Sue

Ironraven,
I've been watching this unfold from the other side of the pond. If this much damage has been done by a "mere" - and I had better not hear anyone to use that term in front of the bereaved - tropical storm, one shudders to think what an "average" hurricane would have done. Or a Katrina.

One interesting point worth noting is the attack of acute post storm sheeplitise. As in it did not come to the worse therefore everyone has over reacted.
Might make an interesting subject for the next FEMA meeting.

Nope, I'm still here, just not contributing much. I live in Burlington which had very little damage. My FD Malletts Bay Fire Dept only had 4 calls the whole storm period,first was at 1500 and last at 2230. Down "powerlines" (really phone lines) only one tree on a house and a fire alarm. We got lucky for the most part. Realatively flat,and away from the mountains so flash floding is not much of an issue. The Winooski river is nearby but is on a lower elevation than the city itself.

When were you at RPI? I used to work in East Greenbush and have family in Albany.

I feel so bad for those in the path of the devastation. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around it.

I stay far from all downed lines, but is there a simple way to tell the difference between a power line and a phone line? From a distance?

Sue

1990-1996 followed by 1 year still living in Troy but working in Schenectady.
-Blast

Sue, an energized powerline is "typically" dancing and sparking. Phone lines, unless it's a major line are a smaller diameter and just lay there. Personally and our dept standard practice is to treat all down lines as enegergized. We just keep people away and wait for the power company. This can make for very long waits.

I spent a lot of time in the old Rathskeller back in 90-91 when my then GF was attending RPI. If I remember right she was a biochem major.

Send in an attorney to test it.

All joking aside, a phone line can be energized with dangerous current if one end of it fell onto a power line or if a power line fell onto it. While energized lines often dance and spark, they don't always. Your best move is to treat all downed lines as energized and call 911.

I was teaching freshman chem lab that year, she was probably a student of mine. Small world!
-Blast

I don't know Izzy. I work for a cable company and our techs are not allowed to use metal ladders because of the threat of electricity. There may be more at play but I'd never take the chance. I recall hearing somethin about older phones drawing their poer directly from the phone lines?

Good advice, even worse a line that may not at that moment be hot can be quickly energized without any apparent human intervention. Power company software is designed to send a current through a problem line at certain intervals to see if a transformer can be reset remotely or to confirm an open circuit issue.

Thus, a line which may have been "safe" a second ago, is suddenly energized now.

Easy way to tell a phone line from power line is to look for insulators (phone line won't have the big ones that power lines do).
Regardless, stay away from them. A lot of people don't realize that you don't have to touch a downed line to be killed by it. If it is live, and touching the ground, it can charge the ground, and the level of charge increases the closer you get to the line. Take a step towards the line with both feet on the ground, the foot closer to the line is at a higher potential (voltage) than the other foot, so now your body is completing a circuit.

The situation up there now reminds of 2004 when Frances and Ivan went through the southern appalachians, although I haven't seen much from Irene obviously. I was in school at Clemson, and I remember driving through the mountains afterwards, and it was unreal how much damage was done. Lots of tornadoes, blowdowns all over, landslides, bridges damaged, and pretty much every river and creek flooded. Actually got to see the Chattooga during its record flood from Ivan, unreal how much water was flowing, and how fast it was moving.

So, update for anyone who cares....

First, thanks to Illinois- our Guard Blackhawks are still in shipping back from their latest deployment, the crews literally landed in Jersey yesterday, so we're borrowing some H-60s and a few, big, beautiful Chinooks, plus flight and ground crews. We've got power crews from Maine and Illinois coming in as well, and the private helos in Vermont are all assisting.

Local heavy equipment owners and operators showing up with their machinery and asking where they need to be, but that is to be expected in a town where the only way we get things done in most towns is volunteers.

Almost all towns are now accessible. By horseback, foot, ATV, dirt and mountain bike, or Guard Hummers in some cases, but there are water, food, fuel and medical supplies getting in. But there are still places where we can't get large trucks to bring in efficient load sizes and most passenger vehicles can't get out. For the few places where even by hoof and by boot you can't do it, helicopter resupply is running.

The number of the missing is going up, but not by a few.

There is question about the safety of personal garden crops that were flooded, citing sewage and petro chem contamination. We are starting to get more word on farm damage, doesn't sound so good for crops- we'll be buying a lot of feed this winter. Lot of small businesses may be done as well.

And we are testing something new with Google, a faster to update and more useful map for the Department of Transportation. Still adding the local roads and small bridges, but considering it didn't exist 100 hours ago it's a pretty good start. http://511.vermont.gov/main.jsf

The big thing I'm not seeing is drop points for supplies. Me and Matt got off light, the Burlington area mostly got inconvenienced unless you looking at a farm. There is a part of me who wants to share the pain with my neighbors.

WOW! It looks like practically the entire state is affected!

I suspect it is much worse than the rest of us can even imagine.

Sue

Hang in there, Vermonters. I remember your state fondly. DB

Sadly, the Lamson knife factory is pretty much wiped out. Unfortunately they laid off 50 workers which to me is a sign that they won't be up and running again any time soon.

Two companies I am fond of 'Spartan Races", and "Peak Races" are HQ'd in Killington, VT and its been hammered. People that work for them and friends of the business near there have been able to update regularly on Facebook regarding the area surrounding their offices that are used annually for some of their hardest annual races.

its amazing how much damage there is there from flooding and being cut off. All the bridges and roads were destroyed. The only way into the area was a long, arduous hike.

If they laid them off due to the flooding, it will allow them to collect unemployment. The owners may intend to continue the business, but it isn't going to be immediately.

Sue

On the flip side -

Did Vermont not know Irene was coming? Did they take any steps at all to prepare?

I mean NC was in a prep-mode for a week before, had the EOC up and running well before the storm hit. FEMA had supplies pre-positioned at Fort Bragg ready to go. Private companies had extra clean up crews ready to rock. The power companies had extra crews in place to help out with damages.

You would think such a forward thinking, each to their abilites, each to their needs, the people come first type of place woulda been ready. (Yes, that was sarcasm)

JB, I've been thinking about how to respond to your attitude. Particularly with what I think was a jab at Burlington's reputed psuedomarxist tendencies, never minding that the Burlington area didn't see squat. In fact, I have to wonder if you are trying to start an argument with those words.

We were ready, as much as we could be. A lot of people were prepared for a repeat of at least this spring's flooding or the '73 flood which are 40-50 year events, which this was much worse than. This isn't quite as bad as the flood we had in the late 1920s, where some roads weren't repaired for four or five years. But this was still a once every 75-100 year flood.

The problem with Vermont, and any place that isn't flat, is that you have two places to build- valleys, and the sides of hills and mountains. Guess where it is easier to build- the valley. Which was made by a river. What had hit us was the loss of the bridges and the roads- and I'd invite anyone who thinks they can do better to please step up and develop a road or a bridge that can stand up to a flash flood where the river is 20 or so feet above flood stage, particularly when said bridge or road bed is still being repaired from damage three months earlier that was 12 feet or so above flood stage.

Now, you mentioned North Carolina and it's military resources. It must be real nice to live in a rich state that has more money, more territory, and several sizable military bases. The Vt Army Guard is still replacing equipment that they had transferred away from it or was combat lossed in their deployment to Afganistan, which ended back in early May. Most of our helo assets are on a ship in the Atlantic because they are coming back from Iraq, and the flight and ground crews got to New Jersey on Tuesday. The lack of highly mobile, high capacity vehilces hasn't helped, but we had Hummers and helos and pack horses almost everywhere within 72 hours of the storm passing.

But if you want to compare North Carolina, go up in the mountains, and drop most of a foot of rain in under 12 hours in those mountains. Particularly after they were "asked" to donate a fair chunk of their water and technical rescue capabilities for a metropolitian area a day's drive away. And keep the active duty military out of it, just the Guard, with only part of their equipment. I doubt they would fare much better, particularly after a previous flood on par with what we had back in May.

But the rain didn't drop into the mountains. Instead, North Carolina got clipped along the coast, where it can drain quickly and doesn't bottle up into tight rivers. I applaud your ability to compare apples and oranges.

So please, show us. Show us how to build a miracle bridge and have a perfect weather forecasts and how to find resources that don't exist. Because I don't think you can, and your sarcasm really isn't appreciated.

JB, I guess my question is "What, realistically, could have been done differently?" Even though they say it, you can't actually roll up the streets and pull towns and states off the map temporarily. We're talking water and wind damage to vast areas, right? Not a rock concert or broadway show that didn't get postponed?

JB, I've been to Vermont. It's beautiful, it's quaint, it has stupendous color in fall.

It's also nearly all up and down. Google 'Vermont scenery' and it will show you a ton of photos showing white homes and churches in small valleys, and the photos always seem to be taken from the top of one of the hills around the valley(s). The storm affect the whole state -- how far can you run when that much area is affected, and how fast?

I don't know a whole lot, but I do know that water runs downhill and sits in the lowest spot.

Just how would you suggest that the people move their homes?

How do the farmers move their barns in a few days? How many cows or sheep can you fit in the back of a pickup truck? How should they have saved their crops? Their haying had probably started, so how do they move all that? Where do they put it?

There was way too much water for sump pumps, so how do you get rid of it? It's already in the lowest areas, so where do you pump it to?

Entire homes and their contents are just gone. Whole sections of roads are gone. Bridges have just disappeared. They can't get into some places except with helicopters or on foot. Helicopters can't usually carry very much, backpacks even less -- do you have an alternative?

Maybe you watch too much television. In real life, problems like what has happened in Vermont don't get fixed in 30 or 60 minutes, minus commercial time.

Sue

Very good reply, IronRaven! Knowledge and logic always trumps the other stuff. DB

Regarding JB's post:

Being in this case a rather detached observer, at least in the geographic sense, it seems to me that most of the pre-Irene concern was about areas at or near the coast. There was some note of possible heavy rains, but from what I gathered, the main focus was on storm tides and flooding in low lying coastal areas. I recall much less warning and concern about upland and inland areas.

Since the storm, there has been much written about how predicting storm tracks has become quite accurate, but predicting storm intensity is still not very precise. Also, according to several others on this thread, Vermont sent a significant amount of resources to other states that were thought (pre-storm)to be at much greater risk. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Here's hoping Vermont recovers as quickly and as completely as possible.

I had this long post about VTs government being stupid, lack of planning, how NC did plan for a MAJOR storm, and about Helicopters and how much stuff they can haul - but poop on it, y'all want to defend Ben and Jerry, feel free.

Vermont is and has been a PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. paradise for a while. I grew up in RI and lived in NH for a bit. VT has about 10 native Vermonters and a load of transplants from other places who went there to live in communes and talk to cows.

The state govenment dropped the ball on this storm. They were unprepared. The weather forecasts were out there at least a day before.

The principle of 6Ps applies.

JB certainly could have been less inflammatory, but I think his point remains.

Critiquing the actions after an event, whether government or individual, has always been fair game on ETS.

Whether or not things could/should have been differently and lessons for next time are always informative.

In the SAR team that I volunteer with, we always do a debrief after every event, whether training or real deal. The objective is to dicuss what worked well, what didn't work, and how to make it better next time. I doubt anyone would have problem with that.

JB's comments however, seemed to me to be mostly a politcal rant, rather than a constructive critique of events.

Being a relatively new member of ETS, I won't address whether that is or isn't "fair game".

Bingo! Exactly right.

The critique process you described was also used by the SAR group with which I associated some years ago. it worked extremely well over the years and boosted the effectiveness of the group enormously.

I'm not as ready to dogpile on JB as maybe some are. I believe JB would probably tell you himself that he is less than skilled in the art of politically correct style than some. That does not make his point any less valid. Regardless of political alignment, some governments are simply less adept at dealing with disasters and being properly prepared than others. If I had to choose where I had to be when a disaster occurred, I would pick Texas over Vermont. I would pick Florida over Louisiana. I'm not saying that's the fault of one political persuasion or the other, but the fact remains. The image of hundreds of of schools buses sitting empty and flooded in New Orleans will be something most of us will never forget.

The key is to figure out what you can expect or not expect from your government officials and prepare yourself accordingly. Knowing that help may be two weeks rather than two days away may be the difference between life and death. As always, YMMV.

I'm seriously not trying to dogpile. I just don't understand what they could have done differently. Maybe I'm too simple minded. Major roads and bridges are washed out and they have to rebuild to rebuild. NYC was back-up and running in a day but wasn't that because they were spared the brunt of the storm?

There's honest critiquing and there's political ranting. JBMat, when you start using censored words guess which form your responses are taking.

This thread is locked due to bad behavior.

-Sheriff Blast