Come on Irene? F*** off Irene

An intense day/night at the office. Hurricane/tropical storm Irene took a left turn at Rockaway and hit Vermont square on instead of sliding past to the east as most of the prognosticators had said. Lots of rain, lots of roads out. Four covered bridges gone, at least one fatality.

Rutland didn’t get the worst of it — try Brattleboro and Woodstock — but we are cut off to the north, south and east. A couple of neighborhoods were inundated. We’ll tot up the damage over the next week or so, but it won’t be pretty. Lots of places reporting damage of historic proportions.

A big thanks to the Rutland Region Medical Center for loaning us a conference room after the power went out downtown. We got the papers to the presses on time … just a question of what highways will be open to get them from the presses to our readers tomorrow.