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All I was going to give you anyway.
"The unthinkable had happened: No Halloween....
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"New York chided over storm response" November 01, 2011|Associated Press
NEW YORK - The storm was blamed for at least 19 deaths in the Northeast, mostly caused by falling trees, traffic accidents, or electrocutions from downed wires. Eight people died in Pennsylvania alone.
Some of the same areas were hit hard by the rainy remnants of Hurricane Irene just two months ago, but in many places the damage to utility wires was worse this time. The trees had yet to lose their leaves and captured all too much of the heavy, wet snow.
The storm was turning into a budget nightmare for cities and towns already dealing the costs of Irene.
“There’s no question that most municipal budgets are past bending and into breaking,’’ said Duchess County county executive, William Steinhaus. “Whether it’s fuel money or overtime money or salt and sand material items, those line items are all stretched or broke at this point.’’
Already? Winter hasn't even started.
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"One of the most powerful storms to hit western Alaska in nearly 40 years battered coastal communities yesterday with snow and hurricane-force winds, forcing some residents to seek higher ground as it knocked out power and ripped up roofs....
I know it's Alaska, but....
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Same here:
"Crews trudge on, cold comfort for thousands" November 02, 2011|By Brian MacQuarrie and Peter Schworm, Globe Staff
WRENTHAM - The painstaking job of restoring power across Massachusetts continued for a third day yesterday, as 285,000 customers remained without electricity and questions mounted about the response of utility companies to repair the damage.
“People are incredibly frustrated,’’ said Kevin Paicos, town manager in Foxborough, where more than 40 percent of the town still had no power. “We only got 3 to 4 inches of snow, and we’re without power for days. People are saying: ‘This is crazy. How did this happen?’ ’’
As crews worked to repair lines from the Boston suburbs to Western Massachusetts, hundreds of customers were being reconnected every hour, utility officials said. National Grid predicted that the vast majority of its 174,800 customers without power at 7 p.m. yesterday would have electricity by late tomorrow night.
I really got lucky out here. We only lost it for about 18 hours.
Still, more than half of the residents in Springfield had no power yesterday afternoon, and many were not likely to regain electricity until Friday or Saturday, officials said....
And I do know some people who live down that way.
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"The Power To Persevere; Swath of state still struggling in cold and dark" November 05, 2011|By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff
NORTH BROOKFIELD - Down the road from the unheated home where an 86-year-old woman died, a widower of the same age, bundled in a hooded sweatshirt, trained a flashlight on the tightly packed shelves of canned goods he had stockpiled for just such a day.
Nearly a week after a ferocious storm cut power to this small town and wide swaths of Massachusetts, Richard Creamer Jr. refused to leave his home yesterday.
He has slept in a chair near a floor vent that carries heat from the wood stove in the basement. He has stocked that stove with fuel every four hours. And he has waited and waited for electricity to return to the ranch house where he lives alone.
Like many residents here, Creamer has chosen to stay put while crews from National Grid slowly bring North Brookfield back online. It has been a painstaking process since the power failed last Saturday, marked by repeatedly dashed hopes and a reliance on neighbors for help ranging from generators to showers.
Yeah, we are good people up here.
“And now,’’ said 78-year-old Helen Sepuka, who lives not far from Creamer, “we’ve lost our poor soul around the corner.’’
Dorothy Hall, an apparent victim of temperatures that dropped to the 30s inside her home, was found Thursday wrapped in a blanket in her living-room chair after authorities were notified by her 59-year-old son, who lived with her.
Police Chief Aram Thomasian said yesterday that the son, who has health problems, apparently had to summon much of his strength just to phone authorities.
“One neighbor called and said they had checked on them Wednesday, but they didn’t want to move or do anything,’’ said Thomasian.
Foul play was not involved in her death, authorities said.
Sepuka, who has heated her home with a generator, shook her head at the lengthening string of days without power. As crews worked on lines above her road, strewn with tree limbs and branches, Sepuka said she has become tired of calling National Grid and receiving predictions that have proven inaccurate....
The exact way I feel after reading a newspaper.
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Bummer come summer:
"Snow days spent, with winter weeks away" November 05, 2011|By Martine Powers, Globe Staff
Last year, the Belchertown public schools canceled five days of school because of snow.
They have used the same number of snow days this week - and the official start of winter is still nearly seven weeks off.
“If this is a harbinger of what’s to come, I’m a little nervous,’’ said Judith Houle, Belchertown school superintendent.
As the state recovers from the snowstorm that pummeled the region last week, some school districts are still struggling to reopen, because schools or a majority of homes in the district remain without power.
But school administrators must also consider the long-term effects of the canceled week of school, playing a numbers game with the academic calendar in anticipation of adding school days sometime during the rest of the year to ensure they meet state requirements.
At least 100 schools around the state were closed for part or all of the week, said JC Considine, spokesman for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Each school is required to hold at least 180 days of school per year, and administrators are starting to determine where extra days might be tacked on to make up for lost time. Those days may be added on to the end of the school year, but they also could come out of scheduled days off in the middle of the year....
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