MONTPELIER, Vt. — Four months and a day after Tropical Storm Irene inundated Vermont, officials are planning to mark the reopening of the last stretch of highway that was closed by the storm — a major east-west artery that was reconstructed in an amazing 119 days.
Route 107 between Bethel and Stockbridge is due to be reopened Thursday afternoon by officials planning to gather at the Stockbridge Central school.
In a storm that left a dozen Vermont towns cut off from the outside world for days, damaged or destroyed more than 500 miles of roads and 200 bridges, killed six and reshaped much of the low-lying countryside, it was the Route 107 repair that posed the biggest single engineering challenge.
The fix included 46 subcontractors and 20,000 hours of heavy equipment time.