BRATTLEBORO — Southern Vermont breathed a sign of relief on Tuesday, having avoided the worst from Hurricane Sandy.
After a night of high winds and heavy rain, Windham County appears to be in good shape in the wake of the biggest and most complex autumn storm in U.S. history.
“We got very, very lucky,” said Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin in a radio interview with WTSA on Tuesday morning.
All major state highways are open, and no deaths or serious injuries have been reported in Vermont, but approximately 900 homes in Windham County were still without power as of early Tuesday evening.
By contrast, 39 people in seven states have been killed by Sandy, and power is out to more than 8 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Maine, and from Ohio to Cape Cod. The storm also killed 69 people in the Caribbean before heading up the Atlantic coast of the U.S.
As a result of the extensive damage south of Vermont, Shumlin said Tuesday that the state will offer whatever assistance it can to other states.
He has dispatched two Vermont National Guard helicopters to New Jersey and has contacted New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch and Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy to see what help Vermont could offer.
Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J., at 8 p.m. Monday with winds of more than 90 mph. It has since combined with a cold-weather system to create a massive, messy post-tropical storm that will be hanging around the Northeast through the end of the week.
Sandy was large enough to bring winds to southern Vermont ranging from 30 to 40 mph in the valleys to stronger than 70 mph at the Searsburg wind farm.
Those winds brought down trees and power lines across the region on Monday night.
Storm watching
The town of Brattleboro opened its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) on Monday afternoon to monitor the storm, but closed it shortly after 10 on Monday night after it was determined that the worst had passed.
According to Town Manager Barbara Sondag, at the height of the storm Monday night, downed lines led to several road closures on Frost Place, near Willow Street and Brook Street. Lines were also down on Orchard Street between Peachtree Lane and Meetinghouse Lane, and Route 9 was closed near the Molly Stark Motel.
At the height of the storm, 551 Green Mountain Power customers lost power in Brattleboro. By noontime Tuesday, that number was down to 31.
The Brattleboro Emergency Notification System (BENS) was activated during the storm, Sondag said. The system made calls to town residents to advise them on conditions around town.
No injuries were reported, said Sondag, and no flooding took place.
The Overflow Shelter at First Baptist Church on Main Street in Brattleboro opened Sunday night for the local homeless population. It will stay open through Thursday morning. About a dozen people showed up there Monday night.
Jamaica, Londonderry, and Winhall also opened their EOCs on Monday, and an emergency shelter opened Monday at the Mountain School in Winhall.
A special Town Meeting in Newfane, scheduled for Tuesday night, was postponed until Nov. 8 at 6 p.m. at the NewBrook Fire Department.
But Halloween trick-or-treating will still take place in Hinsdale, N.H., and Brattleboro on Wednesday night, and Sondag said the annual Horribles Parade will take place in Brattleboro as scheduled.
Wilmington avoids the worst
“We survived pretty well, so that's good,” said Wilmington Town Manager Scott Murphy on Tuesday afternoon.
Irene walloped Wilmington last August, with flood waters breaking previous flood records. The Deerfield River, which runs through the center of town, spilled over its banks. The east and west sides of town, connected by a bridge, were cut off while the bridge was assessed. The town lost power and water.
This time around, aside from a number of downed trees and limbs and “widespread pockets” of power outages across town, Murphy said Wilmington avoided the worst.
“We're more prepared [this time],” said Murphy. “We've learned a lot of lessons from Irene.”
In preparation for Sandy's arrival, the town opened its emergency center in the Twin Valley High School. Murphy said the Red Cross had delivered blankets, cots, and water to the emergency center.
However, no residents came to the shelter on Monday night, and the town's emergency operations center closed at noontime on Tuesday.
The fire department, flooded out during Irene, moved its equipment to higher ground. The highway department also staged its equipment on both sides of the Route 9 bridge that crosses the Deerfield River.
The town continued to stay aware of high wind, which persisted through Tuesday. Road crews were taking down limbs near roads and power lines that afternoon.
“We're just glad we missed this one,” said Murphy.
Thinking of the devastation Wilmington experienced during Irene, Murphy said the town's thoughts are with the people of New Jersey, New York, and other areas hard-hit by Sandy.
“Our empathy is with them,” he said.
Some schools closed again on Tuesday
Nearly all schools in Windham County were closed on Monday, and many were closed for a second day on Tuesday.
All schools in Windham Southwest Supervisory were closed, as were all Windham Central schools, except for Marlboro Elementary, which opened two hours late.
All Windham Southeast and Northeast schools were closed Monday, but reopened on schedule on Tuesday.
Grace Cottage Hospital in Townshend activated its emergency plans. According to Andrea Seaton, executive director of the Grace Cottage Foundation, the focus was on anticipated power outages and the use of enough generator power “to keep the patients safe.”
Brattleboro Memorial Hospital did the same. The hospital said it was coordinating with town emergency personnel, and rescheduled non-essential services and procedures scheduled for Tuesday.
Amtrak's Vermonter did not run on Tuesday, as all passenger rail service in the Northeast was shut down by the storm. It was not clear when train service will resume north or south of New York City.
GMP stays busy with outages
Green Mountain Power crews responded quickly to power outages as they happened. At the height of the storm, more than 43,000 electric customers in Vermont were without power. By Tuesday evening, that number was down to about 4,300.
“Crews have been working hard through the night, and we have made tremendous progress even as Mother Nature kept adding to the damage,” GMP spokesman Jeremy Baker said Tuesday. “Thanks to the massive work force we were able to bring to bear, we were able to clean up a lot of areas overnight,”
Baker said GMP brought in 250 external contract line and tree crew members from as far away as Florida, Tennessee, and California for the storm.
“That's as far as we could ever hope to have crews travel to help us,” Baker said. “Given the enormous threat Sandy held over the entire East Coast, we are thrilled with the crews we were able to assemble and the work they've been able to do already. We'll continue to work until we restore service to everyone affected.”
Once that happens, the out-of-state crews will be released to work in the harder hit areas in the mid-Atlantic states, some possibly as soon as Wednesday morning, according to GMP spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure.
BHA properties avoid trouble
The storm kept the Brattleboro Housing Authority busy contacting residents living in the authority's 284 apartments.
“I think we're ready,” said Executive Director Chris Hart on Monday.
The BHA decided to shelter-in-place rather than evacuate its residents. BHA staff called residents on Friday to advise them on the approaching storm and advise that they prepare for prolonged power outages.
In the case of the residents living at Hayes Court and Melrose Terrace in West Brattleboro, staff also advised about possible flooding. Both properties are located in a flood zone.
Last year's Tropical Storm Irene flooded Melrose and displaced some residents until the BHA could complete building repairs. No flooding occurred on Monday night.
The BHA has supplied Melrose residents with doorknob signs. Residents staying elsewhere could write their name and contact number on the signs, which staff collected during welfare checks later in the day, said Hart.
Melrose houses seniors and adults with disabilities. Hart said the authority chose to shelter-in-place because it felt residents would be safer at home than risking travel on uncertain roads.
Glen Park residents OK
“People are just going bonkers,” said Mary Durland on Monday. She is a resident of Glen Park, a mobile home community in West Brattleboro across the Whetstone from Melrose Terrace. “This is what it means to live on the flood plain.”
Residents worried that history would repeat itself. Glen Park, part of the Tri-Park Mobile Home Park cooperative, saw flood waters from Irene swamp a portion of the park located in the flood plain.
No flooding took place on Monday night, however.
The park lost some mobile homes to Irene's flooding and subsequent mold and water damage. Twenty-two mobile homes remain at Glen Park and, according to Durland, none of the remaining homes are in the floodway.
Moving the park is the residents' best option, said Durland. Where and how to pay for it, however, are a puzzle that it will take a lot of action to solve.
BF: 'Massive preparation'
Rockingham Municipal Manager Tim Cullenen said Tuesday that aside from some downed trees in Cambridgeport, there were few problems.
Bellows Falls Police Chief Ron Lake said his department did not have any storm-related calls Monday night.
Cullenen credited the massive amount of preparation that all the town and village departments did in anticipation of Sandy.
“Everyone is hyper aware of possible impacts. We learned a lot of lessons from Irene,” Cullenen said. “We're much better prepared on many fronts.”
The biggest area of prep work, Cullenen said, was done by the Highway Department, which cleared drains and culverts ahead of the storm.
“Everyone is thankful that it wasn't worse,” said Cullenen, “but we're still watching the weather reports like everyone else to see if there's anything we need to watch for in the future.”
Homelessness concerns
At the Our Place Drop In Center in Bellows Falls, staff worked on Monday making arrangements for their homeless clients to find a safe place to stay ahead of the storm.
It was hoped that the Greater Falls Warming Shelter in North Walpole, N.H., would be available for use on Monday, it was not up to code to open. Its status was uncertain as of Tuesday morning.
Lake said that if anyone found themselves in need of shelter and they either turn up at the police station or give him a call, he “will find shelter for them.”
He cautioned that people who need shelter need to reach out and ask for it, however.
Bill Kearns, Grafton's emergency management information coordinator, said that the town had contractors on call, as well as tree cutting and heavy equipment to move trees lined up on Monday.
He urged neighbors to check in on neighbors to make sure they are safe.
Lucking out
Windham Regional Commission Executive Director Chris Campany has seen his share of hurricanes from his days in the Mississippi Delta.
He said Monday afternoon that while Sandy will not bring the floods of Irene, that does not mean people should let down their guard.
Campany said that Irene, which came with a lot of rain but little wind, was only half a hurricane. People, although cut off because of roads, could still move from harm's way because there was little wind.
Sandy, however, could act as a wake-up call for the region.
“[If we ever got] the platinum hurricane package, you may not be able to get out of the way,” he said.
The state Emergency Management Center in Waterbury opened Monday morning. It closed late Tuesday afternoon.
“We were very fortunate considering what we saw to south of us,” Vermont Emergency Management spokesman Mark Bosma said. “We really avoided some pretty serious damage. It's such a relief we didn't get the worst case scenario.”
Scott Whittier, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Burlington, said that Sandy's increased forward speed kept wind fields out of sync and spared Vermont from anticipated strong winds.
The wind field “got up there to 4,000 feet, but never translated down to the surface,” said Whittier.
Whittier mentioned isolated reports of high winds, with a report of 60 mph winds from Lyndon State College and at least 53 mph winds from Rutland. But most places saw wind gusts of 35 to 45 mph, said Whittier.
“We did dodge a bullet,” he said. Rather than a southeasterly wind flow, as had happened in more violent storms in the 1950s, Sandy maintained a more northeasterly flow, which prevented a widespread, dangerous storm for the state.
The forecast for the next few days remains unchanged, with rain and wind expected thanks to Sandy's lingering influence.
Whittier spent Monday tracking the weather from Waterbury's Emergency Operations Center, where National Weather Service meteorologists are sometimes deployed to keep an ongoing pulse on major storms. The last time meteorologists were embedded there was for Irene.
Whittier said that Sandy generated a “tremendous wind field,” extending more than 500 miles in any direction from the center of the storm, a feature he found to be remarkable.
Not another Irene
Todd Menees, River Management Engineer with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, said he had been on the road all day on Tuesday and had not witnessed any flooding even on some of the larger rivers like the Black and Deerfield rivers.
So far, said Menees, he has not seen that the trauma Irene wreaked on the rivers exacerbated any effects from Sandy.
“This was - as far as rain goes - a fairly non-event,” said Menees. “Still, like everybody else, I was nervous too.”
The Deerfield River in Wilmington rose during Monday's rains to 8.5 feet, said Murphy, but water levels receded on Tuesday. The Route 9 bridge is 20 feet above the river.
Menees called Sandy a “two-year storm” for southern Vermont, meaning there is a 50-percent chance of a storm of that magnitude hitting every two years.
By comparison, he said, Irene was a 113-to-120-year storm.
Menees said that although most of the storm has passed, people would be wise to stay aware of the weather and streams.
Rain is in the long-term forecast for Windham County right through Saturday, according to the Weather Service, but precipitation should be light and pose no flooding threats.
Bosma advised Vermonters to hang on to the extra food and water, batteries, flashlights, and other necessities they might have stocked up on for Sandy, for they can be used during the next emergency. Stash away your supplies, he said, and add to those items for future use.