Community Corner

[Updated 11:15 a.m.] Restoration Under Way - But It Hasn't Been Without Challenges

CL&P staff said they have restored more than 5,000 residents with power since emergency work began Sunday afternoon but continued problems have hampered efforts.

Updated: 11:15 a.m.

Brought in from another town to assist with efforts to rid roads of downed wires and set up restoration work, Connecticut Light & Power workers were at the intersection of Flanders Road and Pattonwood Drive when the call came in.

‘There’s a transformer that just came down on Birchcrest Drive,’ a voice reported over the radio communications system. ‘We need a crew down here to remove a wire still lying on the road.’

“That’s the kind of day it’s been,” Garry Brumback said in a phone conversation, shortly after the latest in a series of additional downed wires that stalled restoration efforts that the town was hopeful could have begun as early as Monday evening.

There is some good news for local residents though, a light at the end of the tunnel. Emergency road clearing is complete and full-time restoration is underway.

But it hasn’t come without its share of challenges for town officials and CL&P crews.

At the end of the business day Monday, there were just seven roads that were still closed - down from 18 the day before - and with both town Highway Department staff and a dedicated CL&P crew set to work overnight, things looked good. That is, until they got the morning report Tuesday.

The town experienced a wave of secondary problems with wires falling under the pressure left on them from Saturday’s storm and even with the overnight work, the town wasn’t able to do much more than break even. There were still six roads closed as of 3 p.m., including Thunderbird Drive, Hightower Road, Metals Drive, Liberty Street, Green Valley Drive and Birchcrest Drive.

said that as of midnight Wednesday morning “at least four of those have reopened.”

“Man – this is what we keep seeing. The whole state’s a mess,” said one of the two-man crew assigned to clear up the Birchcrest Drive problem Tuesday afternoon. While clearing cones from the area while his teammate worked in the truck’s bucket lift, he turned and said “we’ve been at this in eight towns over the last three days and it never seems to end.”

The CL&P workers said as of Tuesday afternoon, they'd restored power to nearly 5,000 customers already in Southington - only to have additional problems knock out more than 2,000 more during the same period.

The town had at least four crews working within the 36 square mile limits Tuesday, and the daily high of almost 11,800 outages was reduced to 8,875 by 11 a.m. Wednesday, 46 percent of the community. The numbers were down from 13,700 at the peak of the outages on Sunday.

There were still more than 546,000 outages to CL&P customers statewide as of midnight.

The news of numbers moving in the right direction is certainly positive, but it might be little consolation to the thousands in Southington who went to bed Tuesday night still without power, knowing they were likely to wake up in the dark yet again.

CL&P President and Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Butler came under fire during an evening press conference, with media and politicians demanding quicker action.

, saying workers have been on the job around the clock since Sunday and the company is confident that with the latest help arriving from as far away as Alabama and Georgia, work will be completed quickly.

“We’re still shooting to have 99 percent of our customers restored sometime Sunday,” Butler said. “That’s what we’re pushing for, and I’ll bring whatever crews necessary as they are available to meet that target.”

Reporters questioned during the Tuesday evening press conference whether unpaid bills the company accrued during their response to Hurricane Irene contributed to potential delays during the response to the recent October snowstorm.

The company had accrued three separate bills from outside power entities that assisted in the response and Butler said “the invoice review process” was conducted as it should have been and two bills were paid Tuesday with the last to be paid off on Wednesday.

“It's less than 60 days from the last event. I don't know when we received their invoice. We reviewed the expenditures to make sure they were prudent, and we've paid the invoices,” Butler said.

Additional crews from out of state were sent to the Southington area late Tuesday night and were expected to begin work immediately. Although the goal is to restore 99 percent of power by Sunday in Southington, according to their latest town-by-town report, which is available by clicking on the link.

In the meantime, Brumback is asking local residents to be patient and continue to work with one another and use the town’s available charging and warming stations at the as well as taking advantage of the shelter at .

Local residents are also being given access to showers at the , regardless of whether they are members, as the town looks to weather the aftermath of the worst power outage in the state’s history.


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