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?