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| by the Journal-Opinion Editor’s note: None of these news stories published in today’s newsletter of the (Bradford) Journal-Opinion have anything to do, directly, with Vermont. But news about outdoor safety, getting power from Canada, and respect for burial sites is of interest to Vermonters. Two Massachusetts men were rescued over the weekend after getting lost in deep snow and blizzard-like conditions while skiing on the summit of Mount Moosilauke in New Hampshire. Per a news release from the New Hampshire Fish and Game, the two men lost the trail due to strong winds and no visibility. They were stuck in a drainage in waist-deep snow when they called for help just before 5 p.m. on Saturday. “The skiers said they had 2% battery life on their cell phone and no warm gear or light to continue.” Conservation officers and volunteers from Pemi Valley Search and Rescue team staged in Warren. They rode snowmobiles on the old carriage road to get 4 miles up and then hiked another 1.5 miles to a drainage on the north side of Moosilauke. Rescuers got through extremely deep snow and thick trees to locate the skiers, Romain Tronchi, 30, of Cambridge, and Gabriel Mahe, 32, of Somerville, at 11 p.m. Due to the deep snow and rugged terrain, it took over an hour to get the skiers back onto the trail where they hiked back to the snowmobiles and down the mountain to the staging area. Everyone cleared at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 18, roughly nine hours after the initial call. Photo above via Pemi Valley Search and Rescue. |
| Northern Pass power line alternative goes online |
| A 145-mile transmission line connecting Canadian hydropower to the New England grid went online on Friday, reports New Hampshire Public Radio. New England Clean Energy Connect connects Quebec with Lewiston and cuts through northwestern Maine. Proposed in 2017 as an alternative to the failed Northern Pass, this project faced its own controversies. “So New England is a hard place to build anything, and energy infrastructure in particular is an extraordinary challenge,” Dan Dolan, the president of the New England Power Generators Association told NHPR. “Northern Pass was one of the most emotional heightened of those infrastructure projects I’ve ever seen in my career.” Dolan says though the electricity is designed to serve Massachusetts, New Hampshire’s utilities could indirectly benefit from lower wholesale prices. |
| Grave robbery on an epic scale |
| In Pennsylvania, a Lancaster County man has been charged in the systematic theft of hundreds of human remains from a historic cemetery where an estimated 180,000 people are buried. “At the family mausoleum of John Hunter, a former president of the Mount Moriah Cemetery Association, authorities allege [Jonathan Christian] Gerlach smashed through a sealed cinder-block doorway and shattered the marble floor,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. “He then rappelled 10 feet into the crypt and removed the remains of 15-year-old Martha Hunter, who died in 1869.” A local police chief called the thefts “probably the most horrific thing” he has seen in 30 years. The cemetery has suffered from neglect and limited oversight. The Mount Moriah Cemetery Association folded in 2011 after years of mismanagement, the paper reports. A nonprofit group started up the same year to reclaim the grounds from vandalism, crime and decay. Even though the cemetery was abandoned by its last owner and in receivership, progress has been made as abandoned cars, trash and overgrowth were cleared away. “Until this happened, security was not our first concern,” said the group’s president. |