SHE WAS GONE’

Nine miles north, at Mount Snow Resort, the rains made Ivana Taseva, a 20-yearold summer employee from Macedonia, nervous. Taseva had come to Vermont two months before with her boyfriend, Kiril Donev, to work in the housekeeping department. She was pretty, with an infectious smile, and just a week away from her 21st birthday. At around 10:00 in the morning, as Irene pounded the resort grounds, Taseva pleaded with her boss, Dana Stone, to drive her to her apartment in Wilmington. Stone tried to talk her out of it, but then reluctantly agreed.

DANA STONE

I didn’t think going into town was a good idea and told her that the mountain was offering condos for people to wait out the storm. But she insisted on going home. So I agreed to take her and her boyfriend, Kiril. I remember there was a little gully as you left the resort, and it was filled with probably a foot of water, and we blew through it. Ivana just laughed. She loved it. “Let’s do it again,” she said. So I backed up and we went through it one more time and then headed toward town.

The closer we got to downtown, the worse the conditions became. About

15 minutes into it, we knew it was serious, and I kept saying, “We should turn around,” but she just didn’t want to. Maybe she thought she’d feel safer in her own apartment. But then, maybe eight miles in, we reached a point where we couldn’t turn around. I was driving a Ford Explorer, which sits up pretty high, and at one point the water was blowing up over the front end of my car. But I knew we were close to the elementary school, which sits on a hill, so I figured if I could just get there, we’d be all set. When we first got into the deep water, my car stalled. I was able to get it going, but then it stalled again, and this time it wouldn’t restart. The water was so deep and moving so fast that it just kind of picked us up and we floated, and eventually we ran into another vehicle near the school that was tipped on its side. That stopped us from going any farther.

We were all panicked, but Ivana, who was sitting in the back, was really scared. She kept asking, “What are we going to do?” Kiril said he would get out first. We couldn’t open the doors, so I kept the power on, and we opened the windows and crawled out that way. After Kiril got out, I climbed out the passenger side. By the time I got out, Ivana wasn’t there. I don’t know if she slipped, or panicked, but I mean in an instant she was gone.

The water was up to our knees and rushing past us so fast. We kept hollering her name, but there was no sight of her. Kiril was yelling and crying. We then headed up to the school, and it was there that Kiril told me that she didn’t know how to swim. I didn’t know. If I’d known, I’d have gotten out with him and then we both could have helped her. But I didn’t know until after.

When we got to the school, we told them what happened. They gave us some blankets to warm up, and then we went out and looked some more. But there was no way we could go out into the water again—it was moving too fast. I saw buildings floating down, propane tanks—it was like some kind of horror movie. And we couldn’t get any police or ambulance out to us. Nobody could reach us. Eventually we were taken by ambulance to the emergency shelter at the high school. It had taken a couple of hours for them to arrive. You wanted to believe that she’d made it, but all that water, the fact that she couldn’t swim, it just didn’t seem likely.

She was so young. She had her whole life ahead of her. I’d rather it had been me instead of her. I still blame myself for it, ’cause I was the one who drove them. I mean, if I’d just said, “No, we’re not going,” everything would have still been the same. She’d still be alive.

‘I CRIED LIKE HELL, ’CAUSE I’D LOST EVERYTHING THAT I’D WORKED FOR’

Nearly as quickly as the waters had submerged Wilmington, they receded. By 6:00 that night, the Deerfield was nearly back to its normal level. But in its wake it had left a downtown that was both devastated and surreal.

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