Posted on 08/31/2011 5:56:54 PM PDT by matt04
On the color-coded power outage map on Connecticut Light & Power's website, southeastern Connecticut Tuesday night was mostly purple and black, the colors representing areas where 61 percent to 100 percent of customers were without electricity.
...
In Ledyard, resident Kim Prescott said she was alarmed to see cars drive under wires with large trees hanging precariously on them on busy Route 117. ...
"For 800 trucks being out, it seems like you should at least see a few here and there," Prescott said.
Prescott said she's driven around her town and others the past few days and sees the same scene everywhere. She said she's worried about her father. He lives in Waterford and has a heart condition, she said, and has been worked up about the lack of information.
"I think that what everyone is really frustrated about," Prescott said, "is there's still a dangerous situation going into the third day, and it's not being taken care of. Hurricane Bob, it was the first day or so and then you saw the cleanup effort. But we're not seeing the cleanup efforts."
...
In Stonington, First Selectman Ed Haberek said he is very pleased with the cooperation from CL&P and the work it has done to restore power. Before the storm hit, the utility asked the town if it wanted a CL&P liaison assigned to the town's emergency operations center. Haberek accepted, and Daphne Vayos, an attorney for CL&P's parent company, Northeast Utilities, responded to the emergency operations center early Sunday afternoon and has been there since.
Vayos has worked closely with police and town officials to assign CL&P crews to areas of damage. As of early Tuesday afternoon, 74 percent of Stonington customers were without power compared with 95 percent on Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at theday.com ...
So people like Kim were warned to expect this from state, local and CL&P officials and are now complain that the worst case scenario that they predicted actually happened and now demand a quick fix.
Could it be that towns like Stonington were proactive and got the liaison in town before the storm so crews knew exactly where the problems were and how bad, such as a small branch or a huge tree down and could get right on the major problems?
We have friends in Norwich. Their power has already been out for several days & they’re being told it could be another 5 to 7 days before it’s restored. Pretty miserable!
Hi matt, we have seen some electric company trucks but they don’t look like CL&P yellow trucks, they are white and have small print on the doors which I haven’t been able to get close enough to read. Must be out of state electric companies here to help.
There is a lot of work still to do in Northern Fairfield County.
I tell you pretty miserable, last hurricane we went 13 days without power, in Houston, during summer time. Talk about HEAT and HUMIDITY!
And the best part was that the house across the street had power four days before mine.
Just so you understand the difference, tonight it's 89 degrees in Houston at 9:00 pm, while in Greenwich, CT it's 68 degrees.
Could it be, “We’re the electric company and we don’t have to care, and it you don’t like it ... try the other electric company .... ha ha ha ah”!
I've been through this in the Carolinas five or six times in the past two decades, and we're going through it again right now. It's particularly rough when you're working every daylight hour mopping up and dragging off the debris. It's bad when the more populated parts of the world have already been brought back up and the world has moved on to the next entertainment.
I feel for these people, I really do, but complaining about the situation won't hurry things along one bit faster.
So why is it I'm enjoying these people whine and complain?
Obama’s fault...
First, We have an idiot First Selectman, who is a Democrat, but I repeat myself. After the storm, he was afraid people walking around outside would get electrocuted because they'd step on a live wire. So he ordered all the power in town off. So people that survived the storm had power at 4:30 PM on Saturday, after the storm had passed. Then Selectman Rudy Marconi orders all power off, and for some reason, those people still don't have power!
One big issue for all of Fairfield County is that almost all the lines are on poles, very few lines are buried. Furthermore, we have large trees everywhere, surrounding the lines, and the trees fall easily during storms, and often take out power lines or block roads.
The soil here is really rocky, so it's difficult to bury lines. It also makes trees prone to fall because the root systems often can't anchor that well due to large rocks. Some more lines probably should have been buried when the roads were built, but it's too late now to rip up roads to bury lines.
Connecticut power rates are the most expensive in the US except for Hawaii. There are a bunch of reasons for this: high reliance on natural gas and almost no power from coal; an expensive state with expensive real estate costs, which means power companies need to pay more to acquire land for substations and line placements; high employee costs due to high living costs and unionization; supply vs. demand of power.
People are getting frustrated, of course, because after a few days, no power gets old. Schools were supposed to start today but will instead start next Tuesday.
Just driving around here, there are a lot of trees down. Big trees. Many of them took electric lines with them, and some poles also fell.
My husband works for Asplundh (main office is in PA) here in central Cali. They sent several crews from here. Flew them to St Louis where they picked up equipment to drive the rest of the way. Don’t know where they ended up tho.
Miserable is when you have no power for weeks and the temperature is in the low to mid 90’s everyday and it’s humid on top of it.
Right after the storm hit the Enfied/Somers area, CL&P trucks were out shutting off some downed lines. They came back about a day later to restore Johnson Memorial in Stafford.
I saw crews from Ontario on Rts. 186, 83 and 190 in Somers working to restore power. I was out for about 50 hours, starting just before 10 AM on Sunday.
You might be a Floridian if:
You exhibit a slight twitch when introduced to anyone with the first names of Charley, Frances or Ivan. Your freezer never has more than $20 worth of food in it any given time. You're looking at paint swatches for the plywood on your windows, to accent the house color. Your freezer in the garage now only has homemade ice in it. You, too, haven't heard back from the insurance adjuster. You now understand what that little “2% hurricane deductible” phrase really means. You're putting a collage together on your driveway of roof shingles from your neighborhood. Your Street has more than 3 “NO WAKE” signs posted. You now own 5 large ice chests. You recognize people in line at the free ice, gas and plywood locations. You stop what you're doing and clap and wave when you see a convoy of power company trucks come down your street. You're depressed when they don't stop. You've spent more than $20 on “Tall white kitchen bags” to make your own sand bags. You're considering upgrading your 16” to a 20” chainsaw. You know what “Bar chain oil” is. You're thinking of getting your wife the hardhat with the ear protector and face shield for Christmas. You now think the $6000 whole house generator seems reasonable. You look forward to discussions about the merits of “cubed, block and dry ice”. Your therapist refers to your condition as “generator envy”. I guess we could replace “Floridian” with "New Englander" so far this season. Me? I look at the above list and realize that it could well be me next.
Thanks to your husband many will be happy after 4+ days without power.
Just saw the news and there was lots of Asplundh trucks in Westbrook, CT.
That is a staging area for crews first thing in the morning then off they go.
Isn’t it great the company spent money on ‘liaisons’ for the politicians instead of wasting their customers’ money on ‘work crews’?
Good luck.
Thank you for that. Those guys aren’t used to getting thanked. They’re used to getting flak because they aren’t working fast enough or hard enough.
I don’t know how they work storm jobs in the east, but out here they work 32 hrs then they have 8 hrs to grab some food and some zzzzzzzzzz’s before they hit it again.
My husband didn’t get to go. He’s too old and knees are too shot to climb any more. So he’s here holding down the fort with the crews that were “left behind”. :)
Thank your husband anyway. After being out of power and losing possessions it is hard to say thank you but you have my gratitude for the many days and nights that hubby was gone through the year’s.
16 hr. shift here.
I will do that.
Our hearts go out to all of you suffering through Irene. I’ve been watching the coverage and it looks to me like she did a bang up job. Prayers and hugs for you too.
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