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.
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-IronRaven
When a man dare not speak without malice for fear of giving insult, that is when truth starts to die. Truth is the truest freedom.