Middlebury Police &
Fire personnel continue to closely monitor Hurricane Sandy. Town Public Works personnel are on
stand-by to clear downed trees and branches on Town roads. For residents
clearing downed trees and branches, please follow the advice of Vermont Emergency
Management: "if you come across a downed power line, never touch it - all
power lines should be treated as if they are live at all times. When clearing
downed trees be sure they are not in contact with power lines as trees can
conduct electricity and you can be electrocuted." River levels will also continue to be
monitored as a precaution. Rescue and evacuation teams are on standby, if needed.
Hurricane Sandy caused big
power outages in New York and New Hampshire, less reported in Vermont. As of midnight Tuesday, Vermont had
12,192 outages. The bulk of outages are in Washington, Windham, Windsor and
Rutland counties. NYSEG is
reporting more than 100,000 people are in the dark, mainly in New York
City. There were only a handful
reported in the North Country. In
the Upper Valley of New Hampshire, Colebrook had some outages. The rest of the state was also reporting
outages.
Vermont Emergency
Management says the opening of state offices will be delayed until 10 this
morning. Essential personnel for
the Department of Corrections, the Department of Public Safety, Institutions
and Transportation Maintenance, should report to work as normal. Employees should be advised to monitor the Vermont.gov
website, the DHR website and the DHR hotline (802-828-0352) for further
developments.
As Hurricane Sandy targets
the area, the Vermont & the New Hampshire Upper Valley American Red Cross
has announced the opening of three shelters. One is open in Rutland at the
Leahy Center at the Rutland Regional Medical Center on Allen Street. Other shelters in the state include
Wilmington at Twin Valley High School and Winhall at the Mountain School.
Some of Vermont's state
colleges have closed or canceled classes due to Hurricane Sandy and its
impacts. Castleton State College
closed as of noon on Monday and was slated to reopen at 7 AM Wednesday. Huden
dining hall at Castleton was to remain open, and students were advised they
could go there in the event of power outages affecting the campus. Lyndon State College was closed at
least until 11 this morning. Vermont
Technical College classes were cancelled, but dorms and dining halls were to
remain open. There were no plans
to close Johnson State College, but students were urged to check the websites
there - as well as at the other schools - for updates.
Travel in our area will
still be a little tricky today as most flights in and out of both Burlington
and Plattsburgh have been cancelled for today. Also Amtrak has canceling all train service across the
Eastern Seaboard. Airport
officials say you should contact the airline directly to see if your flight has
been cancelled. Officials add,
services should be back to normal by Thursday.
The United Way of the
Adirondack Region would like to increase its presence in southern Essex County. Officials of the agency, which serves
Essex, Clinton and Franklin counties, visited Ticonderoga recently to explain
their program and ask for input from local leaders. The United Way of the Adirondack Region includes 41 partner
agencies that provide human services to the North Country. In 2012 United Way
assisted more than 80,000 people in Essex, Clinton and Franklin counties.
Governor Peter Shumlin’s
blue-ribbon panel begins this week to re-examine the way Vermont makes
decisions about commercial-scale renewable energy projects, including
mountaintop wind turbines, wood-burning power plants and fields of solar
panels. Supporters would like the
permit process to produce quicker, more certain project approvals. Skeptics and
opponents want a larger voice for local opposition and greater weight given to
environmental concerns.
The gym at Barstow
Memorial School was election headquarters for students yesterday, buzzing with
politics despite a storm brewing outside that curtailed the campaigns of many
local and national candidates. The
school’s mock election was held from 1 to 2:30 in the afternoon., and despite a
canceled appearance by Sen. Bernard Sanders students in grades pre-kindergarten
through eighth grade rushed into the gym, excited about a scavenger hunt for
answers to questions about who is running, the country’s election history and
casting ballots of their own.
As the election
approaches, the Vermont secretary of state's office is offering information
online about the statewide candidates.
The guide has biographical sketches and position statements on the
candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of
state, auditor and treasurer. The
secretary of state's web site also lists the location of the Vermont polling
places and when they will open on Election Day. The deadline to register for voting is Wednesday.
The state's Labor
Commissioner is having to answer some tough questions, after a report comes
back highly critical of the state's Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, VOSHA.
Commissioner Annie Noonan says the goal is to run the program correctly,
following the report which revealed "severe deficiencies" in VOSHA's
investigations into work-place fatalities, including overlooking safety
violations. Auditors concluded
VOSHA investigators did not have sufficient training or supervising, with their
bosses having even less. Noonan
says since the report's release, the Vermont staff has been retrained.
New York State will be
eligible for FEMA funding to help cleanup from Hurricane Sandy's
aftermath. President Obama signed
a federal disaster declaration for the Empire State yesterday as Sandy
continued to cause havoc throughout the region. State workers were told to go home early yesterday in
downstate areas to prepare for the storm.
Aides to Governor Andrew
Cuomo continue to put final touches on a plan that would allow New Yorkers to
use the Internet to obtain a variety of licenses. The plan would save taxpayers about 100-million dollars annually
upon full implementation in roughly a year's time. When finished, New Yorkers would be able to conduct nearly
all of their state business online.
Cuomo's plan also calls for software developers to create smartphone
"apps" to better bring the Empire State into the 21st century.
Most state employees reported
to work later than usual today and some schools and colleges will be closed as
Vermont assesses the damage from hybrid storm Sandy. Gusty winds blew from the southern part of the state through
the Canadian border as the leading edge of the storm arrived in the state
Monday evening and overnight, knocking down power lines and closing roads. The center of the enormous storm made
landfall at 8 PM near Atlantic City, NJ after it was reclassified from a
hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone.
While Sandy wasn't expected to dump the huge amounts of rain on Vermont
that Tropical Storm Irene did last year, rainfall of 3 to 4 inches was
possible, especially in southern Vermont, bringing with it the threat of
localized flooding.
Winds from Tropical Storm
Sandy weren’t as widespread as feared.
A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Burlington spent
the day Monday tracking weather from the state’s Emergency Operations Center. As Sandy approached the coast it
surprised forecasters by picking up speed, which helped reduce the danger to
Vermont. Even though there were
still significant gusts of wind in Vermont, but they were not as strong as they
could have been. More than 20 thousand Vermonters were without power for at
least part of the storm, due to the winds. The greatest concentration of outages occurred in Vermont’s
four southernmost counties.
Green Mountain Power said
as of 7:30 this morning crews have restored service to 28,693 of the 36,000
customers affected, while 7,344 remain without service. Bennington, Rutland, Washington,
Windham and Windsor counties, were hit hardest, with heavy damage in many
areas. GMP crews have been
assisted by hundreds of line and tree workers who came from as far away as
Florida, Mississippi and California.
The company asked customers with routine business to put off calling the
company until the cleanup is complete, so customers with outages can easily
contact the company.
High winds are forcing
Lake Champlain Transportation officials to reduce its ferry service from
Vermont to New York. The ferry
from Charlotte, Vermont and Essex, New York will depart once per hour instead
of every 30 minutes. Ferry service
between Grand Isle and Plattsburgh will continue as normal despite the
storm. Also, Amtrak has canceled
its Northeast Corridor service north of New York indefinitely.
Hurricane Sandy even disrupted
the schedules of local political candidates. Republican gubernatorial challenger Randy Brock ended up
with less time on a radio program yesterday to allow for a statement from
President Obama about the storm.
And Beth Pearce, the Democratic candidate for treasurer postponed an
endorsement by former Governor Howard Dean yesterday.
Vermont game wardens have
charged a Starksboro man with killing a moose out of season. 25-year-old Shaun E. Rublee is accused
of shooting the animal, which was found on Guthrie Road in Lincoln on October 5th. Vermont's firearms moose hunting season
runs from October 20th to 25th. Game
wardens said they searched Rublee's home and seized eight bags of moose meat,
moose antlers, tools, a rifle and several rounds of ammunition. Rublee faces fines and restitution of
up to $2,500 and 60 days in jail or both.
Ticonderoga’s downtown Halloween Fest is coming
up! Hundreds of ghosts, goblins
and other creatures are expected for the fright fest Wednesday, October 31st. Sponsored by the Ticonderoga Montcalm
Street Partnership, local businesses and organizations displaying a pumpkin in
a window will welcome children in grade 5 and younger along with their families
for trick-or-treating from 3 to 4:30 PM.
Montcalm Street will be closed to traffic from Sunshine Laundry to the
1888 building during the event for the safety of all participants. All the details can be found HERE!
