A Case Study in Ineffective Preparedness: Irene

I think I can speak for all the residents when I extend a heartfelt thanks to all the police, firefighters, EMTs and emergency management staff for their relentless efforts to keep our community safe. Just listening to the sirens going off all week was a reminder of how lucky we are to have the public safety personnel and volunteers we do have in this community.

There wasn't a local community that didn’t feel the effects of Hurricane Irene — Monroe, most of all — in terms of power outages and flooding. However, many communities recovered faster than others. It seems in Monroe, we were one of the last, and we have to find out why.

Why did CL&P position up to 19 trucks (6 tree crews, 13 power trucks) in the Town of Bethel for example and only 13 (4 tree and 9 power trucks) in the Town of Monroe. Monroe is bigger, 26.4 square miles to Bethel's 24. Furthermore, Monroe has 143 roads compared to 114 roads in Bethel and there are also approximately 1,000 more residents in Monroe. Bethel, by the way, had 90% power restored the Friday after the storm and schools were opened on that day.

By the next day (Saturday) they had 99% of power restored, compared to Monroe's 79%. It seems to me the presence of CL&P was disproportionate between the two Towns, and perhaps throughout the State.  Meetings are already planned at the State level with both CL&P and United Illuminating to ask about their performance.

Our Town had the highest rate of outages in Fairfield County – 93%. Why? I believe part of the reason is that the underground equipment is old and is in desperate need of replacement.

Councilwoman Dee Dee Martin spoke at the last Council meeting that, in her neighborhood, they had had four outages this summer alone due to the aging undergroup equipment — which is obviously unrelated to the weather.

The First Selectman told her he was looking into this with CL&P. One resident on Camelot Drive said her power came on for four minutes on Thursday night after the hurricane, went back out, came on at 6 p.m. on Friday night, went out again on Sunday morning and didn't come back on until Monday.

She said residents on Old Castle didn't get power back on until Monday night at 11 p.m. She also said in talking with the crews that they indicated they have "identified deterioration in the underground equipment" and she said in no uncertain terms, "I want it fixed!"

Years ago, the Town experienced frequent outages – homes were losing power at the rate of every other week and we went to DPUC and CL&P to learn the cause. It seemed that CL&P had extended their tree trimming operation from every three years to every five years and it obviously wasn't working.

They agreed to go back to their three-year program and the frequent outages stopped. It looks like the Town will have to once again, hold CL&P accountable for fixing its underground equipment if Monroe is going to have reliable service. If the equipment is deteriorating, it will not get better.