Folks....you all have a spirited group. Again I apologize for distracting you from your own disaster relief efforts.
Let me just add a couple of observations. The national news media is freaking worthless. We had better communication about affected regions in Vermont through our TLCA club forum. I saw video, pictures and reports on roads that were out via our forum well before it ever hit our local media, let alone the stuff that is on the national news media. We had guys and families across VT hit hard, and had folks counting heads to make sure things were ok. Folks lost property, livestock, but no lives---nor cruisers! So in terms of where we could get actual and helpful information it came from our fellow mudders.
Interestingly, the burst of micro-media reports via twitter, facebook and blog posts, has also proven to be a much more reliable source of current information about the flooding here in Vermont. Updated maps and reports take the form of crowd-sourced websites. These are interesting and now instrumental in guiding local relief. Here is an example from our neck of the woods, perhaps something like this exists in yours:
Blurt: The Seven Days Staff Blog: Irene's Impact on Vermont: A Crowdsourced Map of Storm Photos and Videos (Updated 9/1)
As for why national media focuses on any particular story at the expense of others, I don't know and am not responsible. The local news has already featured the power companies from Illinois that are on the ground in Vermont lending a hand. Helicopters have been borrowed from states west of us. FEMA (whose VT headquarters was flooded) is really busting a hump out of temporary facilities themselves. It looks to me like the slow, inefficient, and huge hand of government is moving along just fine. But if your house is under 3 ft of mud, your neighbors have paid their respects, and you only had 3 minutes with a FEMA rep, I expect you would have a different opinion of your tax dollars at work. I get that.
As for why a tropical storm causes such pain over a place like VT (population of 600k), well there were a couple of issues. First, the worst parts of the storm dropped over 7 inches of rain (that's a lot). Second, the ground was already saturated from unusually high levels of rain in August, and a wet winter before that. Third, the mountainous areas across central VT cause the water to pool in valleys. Any town with a creek, stream or river was quickly inundated. Why was this flood a problem? That combination hasn't been seen since 1927. Since most towns in central and southern VT are really old places, like founded in the mid 1700s old, the construction is also old. Houses close to water (mill houses, general stores, etc....) couldn't withstand the floods. Anyway...moving water is powerful and that's all that happened here.
FYI...to complicate further......I have lived and worked for years in Louisiana, lived and worked in Charlotte, and now live and work in Vermont....to the extent any of that matters by way of credibility.
May I still wheel with you if I get down there?
and the govt doesnt help out.
R