Greater Danbury’s Top 5 Most Impactful News Stories of the Decade (2010-2019)

Local officials and developers gathered in Brookfield to break ground on what would soon become Brookfield Village, a project that had been almost 30 years in the making.

Construction began in late 2016 just past the area of town referred to as the "Four Corners". The new Brookfield Village, which officially opened in 2017 is now a retail, commercial, and residential development  designed to bring a much needed town center district to Federal Road. It even has sidewalks!

Long time Brookfield resident and town State Representative Steve Harding had this to say during the ground breaking, "We've never had an actual downtown, so this project is very exciting."

You couldn't have scripted it any better. The Newtown Nighthawks Class LL State Championship win came on the anniversary of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Call it an omen, or just a miracle, but if the town of Newtown needed some extra healing, they got it with a dramatic, last-second State Championship win by the Nighthawks. In fact, it was the first time since 1992 that Newtown had grabbed the brass ring and became state champs with a 13-7 win over Darien.

The team and their unbelievable story was even featured during Sunday Night Football's half time show.

The timing and forecast of this storm was right on cue. Meteorologists were calling for heavy rains and gusty hurricane force winds and that's just what happened. Danbury actually got the worst of the storm when it came to rainfall, with over 7 inches falling between late on Saturday, August 27 and Sunday, August 28.

The Hurricane, which was actually downgraded to a category 1 storm by the time it hit, made its way up the coast as a category 2 storm, with winds close to 100 mph. When the storm arrived, it still packed a punch, with lots of rain and wind gusts close to 70 mph. More than 830,000 people in the state lost power, which at that time, was the worst power outage ever for a storm in Connecticut.

When you looked at the sky on Tuesday (May 15), you could definitely tell that something big was coming.

In under an hour on that humid afternoon, a total of five tornadoes and three macro-bursts devastated residents throughout Connecticut and the Hudson Valley in bordering New York.

Lives were tragically lost and property and landscapes alike were physically uprooted while many families were forced to vacate their homes. Most were without power and basic amenities for the better part of two weeks, if not longer.

Businesses were closed, money was lost, but the one shining light, however, was that in many ways, our community came together like never before.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012. 26 people, including 20 children, between six and seven years old, and six adult staff members were killed.

The incident remains the deadliest mass shooting at either a primary or secondary school in U.S. history, the second deadliest U.S. school shooting overall, and the fourth deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.