Why Are Outage Figures Going Up and Down?

Residents keeping tabs on the Connecticut Light and Power (CL&P) outage map may notice the numbers in their towns rising and falling. According to representatives from CL&P, this is caused by a combination of new outages, restoration efforts and the latest reports from customers.

due to the effects of tropical storm Irene, with statewide as of Wednesday morning.

In Brookfield, outage reports fluctuated between 33 percent Monday afternoon, down to fewer than 20 percent briefly Tuesday, then back up to 25 percent and more as the week wears on.

According to CL&P spokesman Janine Saunders, 95 percent of the outages caused by Irene were the result of trees pulling down power lines, however some did not go down right away, causing new outages in some areas in the days after the storm.

“At the start, many of those [trees] were just leaning on wires,” Saunders said Wednesday. “Now some have brought those wires down.”

Saunders also noted that, at times, workers will have to disconnect power in certain areas in order to work on repairs safely, sometimes for several hours.

Though CL&P has been inundated with calls since the storm hit, Saunders stressed that it was important for residents to report loss of power to the electric company, as the data for their outage reports comes directly from customers. CL&P is asking residents to report outages to 1-800-286-2000.

“If you had power and then lost it, report it,” Saunders said, as a recurring loss of power may be an individual issue and not part of a larger outage.