"The federal government gets an A-plus from this governor," Shumlin said. "They're doing everything they know how to do."

Thirty-five FEMA trucks carrying supplies arrived yesterday at National Guard headquarters in Colchester, where helicopters began airlifting them to cut-off towns, Allen said.

Impassable roads have cut off Dover, 15 miles from the Massachusetts border. At the intersection of Route 100 and Route 9 yesterday, a marker showed the water rose nearly nine feet, above the record marked to commemorate a 1938 hurricane.

Trapped In Killington

In environs of Killington and its namesake ski resort 10,000 people were stranded, including 2,000 vacationers from as far away as Moscow, according to Town Manager Kathleen Ramsey. The resort's base lodge, where skiers check in, collapsed, said Jimmy LeSage, owner of the New Life Hiking Spa.

Route 4, an east-west axis, is severed in a dozen places between the nearby towns of Woodstock and Rutland, according to state officials.

Staffers at inns are hauling water because well pumps cannot work without electricity. Sergey Zaresky, 57, a guest from Chicago at the Inn of the Six Mountains, was taking pool water to flush the toilet in his room.

Stranded vacationers at Killington gazed at torn-up roads and the two resort golf courses, whose water and sand hazards have become mud pits and lagoons.

"This is off the charts," said Whit Montgomery, 36, a Killington police officer and lifelong resident. "Just getting basic infrastructure back will take many weeks. We will be dealing with this for years."

New York Submerged

In neighboring New York, 26 counties saw "devastating effects" from flooding, power outages and other aftereffects, Governor Andrew Cuomo told President Barack Obama in a letter yesterday requesting emergency aid.

"At least four towns and villages are or were underwater: Fleischmanns, Margaretville, Prattsville and Windham," he wrote. "Also, towns of Middleburgh and Schoharie were completely inundated and under water, with the Middleburgh High School being completely destroyed."