"The Vermont Way" applied in Irene recovery
As impressive as the damage from Hurricane Irene has been in Vermont, on Tuesday, the response by Vermonters was more impressive. About 500 road crews got to work quickly - and volunteer firefighters on all-terrain vehicles combed the mountains for residents who were stranded, as CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.
In the town of Jamaica, Catherine Hatinguais and Suzanna Maggi, two retired U.N. translators, were rescued after the road and two bridges that lead to their hillside home washed out.
Catherine said they would have been forced to walk long distances and cross rivers without bridges.
There is only one road into Jamaica now, the road leading out of town sits at the bottom of the Ball Mountain Creek. The creek rose so violently on Sunday it destroyed six houses, including what's left of David Kaneshiro's home.
"(The creek) took out everything the front porch and the front of the house," David says.
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At least 260 roads in Vermont now look like they've been washed out from the side or sliced in two.
To give you an idea of the scale of work involved, just in Jamaica engineers say they have to move an entire creek to complete road repairs in the town. The man redirecting the creek is emergency management director Paul Fraser, and he says they plan on putting the creek back when they're done.
This immediate, all-out effort is what residents call the Vermont way. In Jamaica, they quite properly asked permission to move the river, they just didn't wait for an answer.
"We'll apologize later," Fraser says. "This had to be done."
Another resident we spoke to, whose back porch and barn were destroyed, shrugged it off, saying that's Mother Nature, this is Vermont, you roll with it.
