TomKat=Over

The spell is broken!   [Muahahaha]

10,000 Still Displaced in Raging Colorado Wildfire

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – Making steady progress Saturday against the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history, crews kept a wary eye on weather that was getting warmer and drier as National Guard troops were deployed to help local police get things back to normal.

"The weather is making progress in a bad direction. Hotter, drier, with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Winds will shift from one direction to another," said Incident Commander Rich Harvey.

The 26-square-mile Waldo Canyon fire was 45 percent contained by Saturday afternoon. It was one of many burning across the West, including eight in Utah and a fast-growing blaze in Montana that forced residents in several small communities to leave.

About 1,200 personnel and six helicopters were fighting the Waldo Canyon fire, and authorities said they were confident they'd built good fire lines in many areas to stop flames from spreading.

"Crews made progress all around the fire,'" said Harvey, who was cautiously optimistic. "The fire potential is still very, very high. It's extreme and explosive."

Two bodies were found in the ruins of one house, one of almost 350 destroyed in this city 60 miles south of Denver. The victims' names haven't been released. Police Chief Pete Carey said Saturday afternoon the approximately 10 people who had been unaccounted for had now been located.

Police did not expect to discover other victims in the rubble.

More than 150 National Guard soldiers and airmen helped Colorado Springs police staff roadblocks and patrol streets. Carey said Saturday the presence of military personnel will allow his department to resume normal police work in the rest of the city.

About 10,000 people remain evacuated, down from more than 30,000 at the fire's peak.

The mood was light as evacuees filtered back into an unscathed neighborhood of winding streets and split-level homes within an easy walk of the burned area.

High school counselor Pat Allen and her husband, Vic Miller, were all smiles less than five minutes after returning to their tri-level home on a quiet cul-de-sac.

"I'm just wanting to kiss the house, dance with the neighbors", Allen said.

Their house didn't smell of smoke. Their electricity was out for two or three days but the popsicles in their freezer didn't melt, she said.

Around the corner, retiree Nina Apsey wandered in search of eight small, solar-powered lights that somebody had taken from her yard during the evacuation.

"I'm assuming it was vandalism," she said.

Prized possessions still piled into the Hyundai sport-utility vehicle in her garage included caribou antlers and antelope and deer head mounts. As flames bore down, she'd also taken a small ceramic cowboy statue. Her late husband taught her how to hunt. He resembled the cowboy, she said.

She wasn't too perturbed about her missing lights because nothing else was touched.

"If that's the worst that happened to me, I'm blessed," she said.

On Sunday people whose homes were burned will be allowed to tour the affected areas. Authorities said some residences would be cordoned off with police tape, and people would not be allowed beyond that point.

The home of Janine Herbertson and her 15-year-old daughter, Tessa Konik, remained unburned amid 150 others that were destroyed, said Herbertson as they ate lunch outside a Red Cross shelter.

Even so, "I'm afraid to go on the tour tomorrow and see our neighborhood in ruins," she said.

Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the fire that broke out on June 23, and which so far has cost $8.8 million to battle. Dangerous conditions had kept them from beginning their inquiry.

Among the fires elsewhere in the West:

• Utah: Residents were sifting through the ashes of more than 50 houses destroyed by a central Utah wildfire. Homeowners were allowed to return Saturday to Indianola along Utah's scenic Route 89. In all, eight wildfires are burning across Utah.

• Montana: Authorities in eastern Montana ordered the evacuation of several communities Saturday as the Ash Creek Complex fires, which has burned more than 70 homes this week, consumed another 72 square miles. The blaze grew to 244 square miles overnight.

• Wyoming: A wind-driven wildfire in a sparsely populated area of southeastern Wyoming exploded from eight square miles to nearly 58 square miles in a single day, and an unknown number of structures have burned. About 200 structures were considered threatened.

• Idaho: A fast-moving 1,000-acre wildfire in eastern Idaho that destroyed 66 homes and 29 outbuildings was expected to be contained Saturday. Some 1,000 residents were evacuated; it was unclear when they would be allowed back.

• Colorado: The last evacuees from the High Park Fire in northern Colorado have been allowed to return home as crews get closer to full containment. The 136-square-mile fire killed one resident and destroyed 259 houses, a state record until the fire near Colorado Springs destroyed 346 homes. In western Colorado, the 18-square-mile Pine Ridge Fire was 10 percent contained.

Eastern US Storms Kill 13, Cut Power to Millions

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions across the mid-Atlantic region sweltered Saturday in the aftermath of violent storms that pummeled the eastern U.S. with high winds and downed trees, killing at least 13 people and leaving 3 million without power during a heat wave.

Power officials said the outages wouldn't be repaired for several days to a week, likening the damage to a serious hurricane. Emergencies were declared in Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, the District of Columbia and Virginia, where Gov. Bob McDonnell said the state had its largest non-hurricane outage in history, as more storms threatened. "This is a very dangerous situation," the governor said.

In West Virginia, 232 Amtrak passengers spent Friday night on a train that was blocked on both sides by trees that fell on the tracks, and they were waiting for buses to pick them up Saturday. And in Illinois, storm damage forced the transfer of dozens of maximum-security, mentally ill prisoners from one prison to another.

In some Virginia suburbs of Washington, emergency 911 call centers were out of service; residents were told to call local police and fire departments. Huge trees fell across streets in Washington, leaving cars crunched up next to them, and onto the fairway at the AT&T National golf tournament in Maryland. Cell phone and Internet service was spotty, gas stations shut down and residents were urged to conserve water until sewage plants returned to power.

The outages were especially dangerous because they left the region without air conditioning in an oppressive heat. Temperatures soared to highs in the mid-90s in Baltimore and Washington, where it had hit 104 on Friday.

"I've called everybody except for the state police to try to get power going," said Karen Fryer, resident services director at two assisted living facilities in Washington. The facilities had generator power, but needed to go out for portable air conditioning units, and Fryer worried about a few of her 100 residents who needed backup power for portable oxygen.

On Saturday night, the train passengers stranded near rural Prince, W.Va., were waiting for buses to pick them up after they got stuck at 11 p.m. the previous evening, said Amtrak spokesman Steve Kulm. Kulm said the train bound from New York to Chicago has power, so lights and air conditioning are working. He says that since it's a long-distance train, it was stocked with food and crew members were able to get to town to buy more.

Kulm says passengers should be on the buses sometime Saturday evening.

About 170 miles to the northeast in Morgantown, W.Va., Jeff and Alice Haney loaded their cart at Lowe's with cases of water, extra flashlights and batteries, and wiring for the generator they hoped would be enough to kick-start their air conditioner. Even if they had to live without cool air, the family had a backup plan.

"We have a pool," Jeff Haney said, "so we'll be OK."

The storm did damage from Indiana to New Jersey, although the bulk of it was in West Virginia, Washington and suburban Virginia and Maryland. At least six of the dead were killed in Virginia, including a 90-year-old woman asleep in bed when a tree slammed into her home. Two young cousins in New Jersey were killed when a tree fell on their tent while camping. Two were killed in Maryland, one in Ohio, one in Kentucky and one in Washington.

Illinois corrections officials transferred 78 inmates from a prison in Dixon to the Pontiac Correctional Center after storms Friday night caused significant damage, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Stacey Solano said.

No one was injured, Solano said. Generators are providing power to the prison, which is locked down, confining remaining inmates to their cells.

Utility officials said it could take at least several days to restore power to all customers because of the sheer magnitude of the outages and the destruction. Winds and toppled trees brought down entire power lines, and debris has to be cleared from power stations and other structures. All of that takes time and can't be accomplished with the flip of a switch.

"This is very unfortunate timing," said Myra Oppel, a spokeswoman for Pepco, which reported over 400,000 outages in Washington and its suburbs. "We do understand the hardship that this brings, especially with the heat as intense at is. We will be working around the clock until we get the last customer on."

Especially at risk were children, the sick and the elderly. In Charleston, W.Va., firefighters helped several people using walkers and wheelchairs get to emergency shelters. One of them, David Gunnoe, uses a wheelchair and had to spend the night in the community room of his apartment complex because the power — and his elevator — went out. Rescuers went up five floors to retrieve his medication.

Gunnoe said he was grateful for the air conditioning, but hoped power would be restored so he could go home.

"It doesn't matter if it's under a rock some place. When you get used to a place, it's home," he said.

More than 20 elderly residents at an apartment home in Indianapolis were displaced when the facility lost power due to a downed tree. Most were bused to a Red Cross facility to spend the night, and others who depend on oxygen assistance were given other accommodations, the fire department said.

Others sought refuge in shopping malls, movie theaters and other places where the air conditioning would be turned to "high."

In Richmond, Va., Tracey Phalen relaxed with her teenage son under the shade of a coffee-house umbrella rather than suffer through the stifling heat of her house, which lost power.

"We'll probably go to a movie theater at the top of the day," she said.

Phalen said Hurricane Irene left her home dark for six days last summer, "and this is reminiscent of that," she said.

Others scheduled impromptu "staycations" or took shelter with friends and relatives.

Robert Clements, 28, said he showered by flashlight on Friday night after power went out at his home in Fairfax, Va. The apartment complex where he lives told his fiancee that power wouldn't be back on for at least two days, and she booked a hotel on Saturday.

Clements' fiancee, 27-year-old Ann Marie Tropiano, said she tried to go to the pool, but it was closed because there was no electricity so the pumps weren't working. She figured the electricity would eventually come back on, but she awoke to find her thermostat reading 81 degrees and slowly climbing. Closing the blinds and curtains didn't help.

"It feels like an oven," she said.

At the AT&T National in Bethesda, Md., trees cracked at their trunks crashed onto the 14th hole and onto ropes that had lined the fairways. The third round of play was suspended for several hours Saturday and was closed to volunteers and spectators. Mark Russell, the PGA Tour's vice president of rules and competition, couldn't remember another time that a tour event was closed to fans.

"It's too dangerous out here," Russell said. "There's a lot of huge limbs. There's a lot of debris. It's like a tornado came through here. It's just not safe."

The outages disrupted service for many subscribers to Netflix, Instagram and Pinterest when the storm cut power to some of Amazon Inc.'s operations. The video and photo sharing services took to Twitter and Facebook to update subscribers on the outages. Netflix and Pinterest had restored service by Saturday afternoon.

The storm that whipped through the region Friday night was called a derecho (duh-RAY'-choh) , a straight line wind storm that sweeps over a large area at high speed. It can produce tornado-like damage. The storm, which can pack wind gusts of up to 90 mph, began in the Midwest, passed over the Appalachian Mountains and then drew new strength from a high pressure system as it hit the southeastern U.S., said Bryan Jackson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

"It's one of those storms," Jackson said. "It just plows through."

A Little Pomerance Park History...

From a 2007 article that I somehow missed:

An Estate, and a Family, Are Split

BARBARA W. TUCHMAN used to hike up to a tiny wooden cabin, no larger than 100 square feet, on her Cos Cob estate, to sift through notecards of research and type the history books that would make her famous. She could look across the valley from there and watch the deer gathering on the opposite hill at dusk.



Ms. Tuchman twice won the Pulitzer Prize and is one of the best known historians of the 20th century. Her greatest legacy will always be those books, which have sat on the nightstands of presidents. But this land in Cos Cob, she felt, was another kind of legacy. Near the end of her life, she feared that her three daughters would sell it and she wrote them impassioned letters imploring them to keep it in the family.

It was not to be.

A few years after Ms. Tuchman's husband died, two of her daughters sued the third, attempting to divide the land and sell their portions. The dispute has lasted four years.

Earlier this month, a judge divided the 43.4 acres that remain of the estate. Cos Cob is part of Greenwich and the town plans to buy about two-thirds of the property, while Alma, 56, Ms. Tuchman's youngest daughter, will continue to own and live on the 12.52 acres left. She will likely appeal the ruling.




Barbara Tuchman's father, Maurice Wertheim, a wealthy banker, bought the approximately 120-acre estate in 1912, the same year she was born. She was raised in New York, but spent weekends and summers in Cos Cob riding horses, swimming in the pond and enjoying the natural beauty of the land. Greenwich residents sometimes got to enjoy the property, too. John B. Margenot Jr., a longtime Greenwich resident and former first selectman, said he remembers skating at the Tuchmans' pond with other children.


''They were good about things like that,'' he said.


Ms. Tuchman graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933 and married Dr. Lester Reginald Tuchman, a New York internist, in 1939. Around the end of World War II, the couple moved into a building that held a chicken coop and potting house on the Cos Cob property. The Tuchmans still lived in New York, but went to the house on weekends and during the summer. Their three children rode horses in a ring next to the house and rowed a canoe to an island in the middle of the seven-acre pond for picnics.

Meanwhile, Barbara Tuchman became famous. Her book ''Guns of August,'' about the beginning of World War I, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962. She ''treated herself'' to the writer's cabin with its stone fireplace using the proceeds from one of her books, said Alma Tuchman. When she was deep into a book, she would climb the hill to the cabin at 7 a.m. and stay there for the next 12 hours, save for a trip back to the house for a sandwich, which she would carry back on a tray, Alma Tuchman recalled.

The telegram informing Ms. Tuchman that she had won her first Pulitzer Prize still hangs in her study in the house, next to a picture of former President Jimmy Carter with a note attached assuring Ms. Tuchman that the president was reading her book.



Though the world was lining up at the door, the family became less apt to open the property to members of the community as time went on: ''It wasn't any longer a small-town community,'' Alma Tuchman said.

Late in life, Lester and Barbara Tuchman moved to Cos Cob for good and Ms. Tuchman continued working on her books. She still had a book on the best-seller list when she died in 1989.



While she was still alive, Ms. Tuchman had deeded the property to her daughters to share evenly.



Alma Tuchman retired from her job as a journalist and moved to the property in the late 1980's, but her sisters lived in other parts of the country. Lucy Eisenberg, a retired lawyer, lives in Los Angeles. Another sister, Jessica Mathews, is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Ms. Eisenberg said she did not want to comment about the property. Ms. Mathews did not return phone calls seeking comment.



Barbara Tuchman insisted nothing be done with the property for 10 years after her death, Alma Tuchman said. She wanted the land to remain in the family's hands because it had given her ''a basic happiness and comfort ever since our establishment here as a family,'' Barbara wrote in a ''letter to my family'' in 1988. In the letter, she specifically warned against selling it to the town to use ''as a park or so-called 'open space.'''



But after the 10 years passed, the dispute began, pitting the sisters against each other. Alma Tuchman wanted to remain living on the land and preserve the entire parcel for the family, but her sisters wanted to claim their own portions, eventually deciding to sell them to the town.



With the sisters unable to resolve differences, Ms. Eisenberg and Ms. Mathews sued Alma Tuchman in October 2000. The case dragged on: The file has five parts and is about six inches thick, its own epic history.



Ms. Eisenberg and her husband, David, have created a trust to control their piece of property. In June 2001, the town of Greenwich entered into an agreement with Ms. Mathews and the Eisenbergs to purchase their share of the property for $8.67 million. In May 2002, the town intervened in the lawsuit to protect its interest.



The decision came back Aug. 4. The judge, David R. Tobin, split the land into two pieces, giving about two-thirds to Ms. Eisenberg and her sister and one-third to Alma Tuchman. Her 12.52-acre portion, which will be maintained as a private estate, is worth $9,525,000, according to Judge Tobin's ruling.



The land given to the two other sisters is 30.74 acres and is worth $18,050,000, the judge said. All of this is subject to appeal. The Eisenbergs and Ms. Mathews have agreed to make a charitable donation to the town to make up the difference between the value of the land and the price they have already negotiated.



Alma Tuchman said she no longer speaks to her two sisters. Barbara Tuchman, she said, would be ''appalled and sickened'' by what happened.

The town has not yet decided what it will do with the land, though it has expressed interest in allowing it to remain undeveloped as open space. The town has already purchased the adjacent Pomerance property, part of Mr. Wertheim's original estate and deeded to another one of his daughters. The town allows the public to use it. The parcel owned by Ms. Mathews and the Eisenberg trust could be added to the Pomerance parcel to create one larger piece of open space.

Jim Lash, the first selectman of Greenwich, said the town planned to review the ruling once it is final and decide what to do. He said he foresees three options for the land: open space, playing fields, or low-income housing.



''There are a number of possibilities there,'' he said last week.

Alma Tuchman, a conservationist who talks about the threatened species on the property and the various kinds of weeds clinging to the trees, is concerned that even if the town decided to keep the land as open space, it won't spend money on maintenance. The Pomerance property has already been overtaken in spots by weeds, and last week garbage and a discarded beer can floated in the pond.

''Over all it's very admirable in concept for the town to spend so much money acquiring open space, but I think it's also irresponsible to acquire land that you cannot take care of, and I think it's clear that the town can't take care of what it already has acquired,'' she said. ''Open space becomes nobody's land and nobody's responsibility.''

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 Wyndygoul's "manor" house, located at the top of a one-quarter mile uphill drive, was designed by Seton in a style that reflected his unique personal architectural ideals, later carried out in three other houses as well. It combined the styles of American western stucco and stone with British Tudor and was a three-story construction, with low, beamed ceilings, thick walls and wood cornices, a large bay window, and generally simple, somewhat boxy lines.

Circa 1908. "Wyndygoul, home of E.T. Seton." The writer-naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, at his Cos Cob, Connecticut, estate.