Frederic Noyes
Once the electricity came back on, we started seeing images and video of the destruction. It was a shock to see the state of the Brattleboro Farmers' Market site and the raging Whetstone Brook, Flat Street, and what happened in Wilmington.
When we started seeing military Humvees on Western Avenue, it solidified the understanding this wasn't a typical storm by any stretch. The national media missed it completely at first and then scrambled to try and get cameras and reporters up here.
Rick Hege
I attempted to explain to grandson (6 years old) why he had to stay, with his father, at our house and could not go home after we picked them up from the evacuation center at NewBrook Firehouse.
Seems easy but was not.
Wendy M. Levy
I wasn't in Vermont. I had voluntarily evacuated Jersey City, N.J. (my home at the time) because we lived very close to the floodplain.
I went to my mom's house in Morris County, N.J., where ironically, they lost power (meanwhile, back in Jersey City, it just rained a bit, and that was all).
So, the morning of the storm, I was eating at a diner with Glenn, my boyfriend, and I looked up at the diner's television, which was tuned to CNN, and I saw the big blue art building over on Williams Street falling into the Whetstone. And I saw Flat Street under water.
I started crying into my eggs.
“Glenn, my town is in trouble.”
It still makes me sad to remember those images and sad that people are still having to deal with it. For example, I really miss Adivasi. I know the storm was very difficult for the Bhanti family.
Margaret Michniewicz
Ivana Taseva, rest in peace.
Kathy Looney
I live uphill from Elm Street in Brattleboro, and I remember the fire department putting cones across the intersection of Elm and Canal Streets and thinking it odd.
Then I saw the deep floodwaters of the Whetstone Brook all the way beyond Flat Street. I never saw flooding like that before.
Judi Hafner Ragnarsson
I woke up that morning thinking, “Wow, they [the meteorologists] really got this one wrong!” No electricity, but no biggie - until I tried to drive to work and bridges were out both ways.
Not able to call into work, I waited. At approximately 1:30, one of my staff came up my driveway in the back of someone's ATV to check on me.
I thought we had seen the worst of it, until she told me how bad it was in other towns. In the following days, the stories I heard were terrible.