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Bennington woman witnesses history and horror in Boston

April 18, 2013
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Danielle Fogarty is a witness to history and horror. Her impending moment of great personal triumph — finishing the Boston Marathon — was suddenly shattered Monday when two bombs, in quick succession, exploded in front of her.

“None of us in our experiences here expect to see explosions and none of us expect to see flesh and burns and things. So, it’s unimaginable to be running toward the finish line and have that happen,” Fogarty said.

She shared her personal account of the events with the Banner on Wednesday, even as she was still processing the grisly scene that played out before her. At times she laughed. Other times she cried, pausing frequently to gather her words or wipe away tears. Throughout the 45-minute interview, though, she was wholly open and honest as she recounted her experience and shared her thoughts and feelings.

The story appears in today’s edition of the Bennington Banner, accompanied by a picture taken by staff photographer Peter Crabtree. With her arms crossed and a sorrowful, almost pained expression, it perfectly captures Fogarty’s inner anguish as she describes the terror she witnessed.

She spoke of how running allows her “to be in spirit.” She was able to stay in that state for some time despite the jarring explosion, followed by screaming, ghastly injuries and a wave of spectators rushing the opposite direction. She ran on toward the finish, just hundreds of yards in front of her, clearly in sight. Her partner Charles was supposed to be there cheering as she finished. Instead they found each other shy of the line and quickly left the scene.

Danielle Fogarty (Photo by Peter Crabtree)

Danielle Fogarty
(Photo by Peter Crabtree)

Interviews vary depending on the story. Sometimes they are light and fun. Sometimes they are combative. Sometimes, frankly, they are boring.

This one was moving and riveting.

Fogarty needed little prompting. In fact, she offered long, thoughtful answers to questions that probably did not meet the gravity of her experience. I was moved by her story and was myself caught up in her responses and her emotions.

Perhaps her shortest answer on Wednesday summed up how most feel about Monday’s attack:

“It’s a shame. It just a shame. It’s sad, unnecessary, stupid, cowardly,” she said.

Hers was not a fun story to tell, but it was a necessary one. Her responses, and the compassion and sorrow she expressed for whomever perpetrated the attack, provide a perspective worth sharing.

“It’s senseless violence against absolutely innocent spectators. That anybody would intend to hurt and think that that was an effective way of achieving anything, my heart goes out to a person who thinks that their only alternative is violence. It is senseless and for a person to be in that place where that act makes sense is tragic,” Fogarty said.

Bennington Banner videos by Peter Crabtree

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Reacting to the attack

April 16, 2013
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The alert chimed on my phone just shy of 3 p.m. I pulled it from my jacket pocket expecting to simply dismiss another AP alert, an action I perform several times a day and probably in my sleep. But after a quick glance at the screen — and then a double take — I had a gut feeling that the afternoon was about to change.

“Two explosions reported at the Boston Marathon finish line.”

Sure enough, it did.

I was hanging around the town office waiting for Gov. Peter Shumlin to drop by and pay a visit to a handful of local officials. I needed to follow up on comments he had made earlier in the day to a group of local business owners. In the meantime, I asked employees in the town clerk’s office to bring up news coverage online. It didn’t look good.

Shumlin, ever the picture of vigor, bounded through the door, said his hellos, then reluctantly approached me, likely knowing I had questions. As a courtesy, I told him of the bombs in Boston. “What? How bad?” he asked. “Bring it up,” he told Assistant Town Clerk Cassandra Barbeau. “Scroll down,” he said, apparently a fast reader.

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Shumlin’s turn

April 4, 2013
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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch, an independent and Democrat, respectively, have been regulars on MSNBC programming recently. Both pols are known to lean left, so it’s no surprise they’ve found a hospitable place on MSNBC, a cable news outlet that is widely seen to cater to the political left.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin

Now, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, also a Democrat, is taking his turn in the spotlight. Recently elected chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, Shumlin’s star is shining considerably brighter in Washington these days.

Below is a link to a clip of an appearance by Shumlin on the April 2 “Morning Joe,” the channel’s morning program. He joined David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, to talk health care and governor’s races.

Shumlin on Morning Joe

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Woman describes flood water rescue

September 6, 2011
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NEAL P. GOSWAMI
Staff Writer
BENNINGTON — Charlotte Peterson and her brother Charles Orville “Mickey” Peterson were hunkered down in their Route 67A home as Tropical Storm Irene dumped rain outside. They thought they would be safe at home, but as the Walloomsac River spilled over its banks, it quickly became apparent they needed help.

“In the beginning, nobody really evacuated down here until I called 911. I told them you gotta send someone down here to evacuate us. The water came up so fast,” Peterson, 67, said a week after she and her brother were part of a dramatic rescue mission that has left her brother hospitalized.

Irene’s torrential rains pounded the area, creating raging rivers out of normally serene waterways. The rising Walloomsac essentially created a new river down Route 67A near the Paper Mill covered bridge. Water flowed without restraint, destroying the road and flooding homes.

Meanwhile, Peterson and her brother waited for help to arrive. Members of the North Bennington Fire Department mobilized and approached the Petersons’ home with a boat. Peterson said she and her brother were loaded in and began making their way to safety.

Then the problems began.

“We got up to the picket fence and they couldn’t get us any farther. They tried to pull and it still wouldn’t go. The boat started filling up with water. That’s when I slipped out and I grabbed a tree in my yard and held onto a limb. In the meantime, my brother was hanging onto

the picket fence and there was a guy trying to put a lifejacket on him,” Peterson said.Peterson would cling to the tree — and life — for an hour while rescue personnel struggled against the fast-moving flood water. “I kept hollering please help me. And they kept saying they’ll be coming pretty soon. I was fighting the debris that was coming down. There was an awful lot of debris — trees and everything else,” she said. “I was going from one hand to the other hand. I got a lot of bruises.”

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Bennington County eligible for individual FEMA help

September 6, 2011
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NEAL P. GOSWAMI
Staff Writer
BENNINGTON — Residents of Bennington County who suffered damage from Tropical Storm Irene are now eligible for individual assistance from the federal government, according to Gov. Peter Shumlin.
Shumlin requested that Bennington, Addison and Orange Counties be added to the Individual Disaster Declaration on Saturday. The request was approved on Sunday, according to Shumlin’s office.

 

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am to President Obama for his concern and responsiveness. He turned around that request on a Sunday in less than three hours,” Shumlin said.

Windham, Chittenden, Washington, Rutland and Windsor Counties had already received the declaration.

Some individual property owners in Bennington County sustained massive damages, including the loss of homes, following major flooding on Aug. 28 from Irene’s torrential rains. Swollen rivers cut through banks and washed away homes in several places.

Shumlin said the individual assistance declaration makes private property owners eligible for up to $30,400 in cash grants to help cover the cost of repairs. Additional low-interest loans are also available to help cover uninsured property losses, he said.

“This is a really important break for us,” Shumlin said.

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Woodford Route 9 bridge work begins, slated to open late next week

September 1, 2011
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NEAL P. GOSWAMI
Staff Writer
WOODFORD — State transportation officials said Thursday they plan to be able to reopen a Route 9 bridge late next week.

State Rep. Bill Botzow, D-Pownal-Woodford, right, is briefed on repairs to a washed out bridge on Route 9 in Woodford Thursday. (Neal P. Goswami/Bennington Banner)

The bridge was washed out Sunday by raging water from Tropical Storm Irene, cutting off access to Bennington from the west.

Mike Hedges with the Vermont Agency of Transportation said construction crews working on the Bennington Bypass have been mobilized to work on repairing the bridge. They are also helping to replace a water main that feeds the town of Bennington from its water treatment facility just west of the bridge.

Officials sought earlier this week to locate a temporary, one-lane bridge to allow traffic to access Woodford and Wilmington, whose downtown was devastated by flooding. Hedges said that plan has been scrapped, however. Instead, crews will look to remove the collapsed portion of the bridge and fill it with earth.

“We got a pretty quick repair method for it and they should be able to move right on to that,” Hedges said. “The bridge itself is in fine condition. It just lost that one abutment, the west abutment. The plan is to cut off that span of bridge, cut that loose, and then fill in that first span using geo-textile fabrics to build a stable soil that fills in behind that first pier.”

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Water main repair underway in Bennington

September 1, 2011
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NEAL P. GOSWAMI
Staff Writer
BENNINGTON — Replacement water main pipe arrived Thursday and crews began replacing several hundred feet, hoping to have the town reconnected to its water filtration plant in Woodford by late Friday.

Powerful floodwater from Tropical Storm Irene’s rains washed out a bridge on Route 9 Sunday between Bennington and the filtration plant. The collapsed bridge took down a section of water main with it.

Work on replacing a water main began Thursday in Woodford and Bennington town officials hope to have the town water system back online over the weekend. (Neal P.Goswami/Bennington Banner)

Hundreds more feet of pipe were washed out further down Route 9 toward Bennington as well, said Bennington Town Manager Stuart A. Hurd.

Town officials and water department crews have been scrambling since Sunday to keep water flowing to homes and businesses, and to repair the heavily damaged water system infrastructure.

Hurd said Thursday the issue remains a problem, but with materials now available, the plant should soon be back online.

“The water situation still remains our most critical situation. Work is ongoing in Woodford where the water pipe was actually damaged,” Hurd said. “We found an additional 300 feet of damaged pipe that we’re going to have to bridge, but we found it earlier enough that we got it on the truck before it left its supply depot.”

Officials confirmed Wednesday that the water intake for the system located on Bolles Brook is “entirely destroyed,” Hurd said. A pump has since been placed in the City Stream below Bolles Brook, which will feed the water system once it is ready to be reconnected, he said. Water is already being pumped to the plant to test the plant’s systems.

“That work has begun already as we test the facility that has been shut down for five days now. We’ll be testing all of our meters, all of our capabilities there. Ultimately, when we’re satisfied, we’ll pump water into a 1.2-million-gallon tank at the treatment facility itself,” Hurd said.

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Slideshow: Aerial views of Bennington County and Wilmington 8/30/11

August 31, 2011
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Aerial views of Irene’s aftermath in Bennington County and Wilmington, Vt., taken Tuesday, Aug. 30 by Bennington Banner staffer Austin Danforth.

 

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Water stable, work begins on rivers and bridges

August 31, 2011
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NEAL P. GOSWAMI

Staff Writer

BENNINGTON – Town officials said a plan to keep water flowing is working, but additional destruction of water system infrastructure was found Wednesday that will add to the cost and time it will take to refurbish the system.

Town Manager Stuart A. Hurd said a reserve of 1.5 million gallons of water should remain in a 3 million gallon tank on Chapel hill after the Water Department was able to pump enough water from the Morgan Spring to cover daily usage under conservation practices. The town will continue to pump water into the large tank nightly from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. until the water main, severed by the flooding from Tropical Storm Irene, can be patched.

“We were able to pump 300,000 gallons back into the 3 million gallon tank over night last night,” Hurd said. “Current low-flow … in the town is about 300,000 to 400,000 gallons a day. So, we, in effect, appear to be able to meet that daily demand, which means the tank remains at 1.5 million gallons as an emergency situation. What that means, potentially, is that when the work in Woodford is finished, and we can do the testing regimes, the connection to the town’s system from Woodford would be without any boil water order.”

Water conservation efforts by town residents and businesses “remains paramount,” however, Hurd said.

“The schools not opening for a week is a Godsend,” he said.

View from the Woodford side of a washed out bridge on Route 9. (Neal P. Goswami/Bennington Banner)

The town’s water filtration plant east of town in Woodford has been cut off from the town since Sunday. A bridge on Route 9 was washed out by raging flood waters, snapping the pipe. Another section about a half-mile down Route 9 was also destroyed, Hurd said.

Crews working on the Bennington Bypass project were redirected Wednesday to begin work on replacing the water main. Officials had hoped to begin putting new pipe in place Wednesday, but the new sections of pipe were delayed and not expected to arrive until Thursday. Hurd said work is now expected to be completed late Friday.

Water must then be tested to ensure there is no bacterial growth after a 24-hour incubation period. Testing facilities in Vermont are not available, Hurd said, so the town will look to send samples to labs in the Albany, N.Y. area.

“That means we’re into the weekend before we’ll know whether or not we can turn the system on without a boil water order. If in fact something goes wrong, such as we find additional leaks in that line that we’re now not aware of, or we can’t meet the chlorine residual requirements, most likely we would then, after 24 hours notice, probably on Tuesday, if we can connect to the system, we will connect with a boil water order,” Hurd said.

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Bennington water plan in place, recovery continues

August 30, 2011
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NEAL P. GOSWAMI
Staff Writer
BENNINGTON — Bennington officials are hoping to begin repairing a broken water main that has separated the town from its water filtration plant in Woodford by noon Wednesday. Meanwhile, they worked on a plan Tuesday to keep water flowing to homes and businesses during the restoration efforts.

Bennington Town Manager Stuart A. Hurd said Tuesday morning that at least 17 homes in Woodford, on the eastern side of the washed out bridge, were without water. Town staff delivered bottled water to those homes, he said.

A broken Bennington water main is visible where a bridge collapsed on Route 9 in Woodford. (Neal P. Goswami/Bennington Banner)

A 3 million gallon tank on Chapel Road that serves most of town was dwindling, but Hurd said water department staff were planning to pump water from the Morgan Spring back into the tank late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning when demand decreased. He said the water system was designed to redirect water to the tank and can be filled enough each night to provide a day’s worth of water to the town.

“We know the pump system will work,” he said.

Meanwhile, Vermont Pure, which has a contract to pump water from Morgan Spring for bottling, will bring 8,000 to to 16,000 gallons of water per day to a smaller tank serving Burgess and Barney Roads.

Work will begin Wednesday on installing several hundred yards of above-ground, temporary water main to reconnect the filtration plant. Once completed, the town will “blow out” the line to clean it, heavily chlorinate it and then begin state-required testing.

“That will provide the connection to the municipal system downtown. At the same time, we’ll be working to make sure that the intake is clear and that it is functioning properly. If that is not we’ve made arrangements to receive a large pump that will pump directly from the Bolles Brook into the filtration plant,” Hurd said.

It is possible the system could be returned to normal this weekend, according to Hurd.

“If everything goes the way we hope it will go we’ll be able to turn that system on Saturday morning without a boil order. We’ll be back to normal,” he said.

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