Some in State to Get CL&P Restoration Updates

Town Hall and the library has power in Oxford, but three quarters of the town are still without power as of Wednesday morning and Connecticut Light & Power still doesn't have a good estimate of when the lights will be back on in the town and many parts of the state.

“We realize getting restoration times is important,” Jeff Butler, president and chief operating officer of CL&P said during a Wednesday morning press conference. “That is a primary focus right now.”

For now, only customers who live in the areas around Torrington, Cheshire, Tolland and Hartford will receive restoration estimates, Butler said. The company does not have information on when other customers will receive estimates, Butler said.

“We are getting those restoration projections,” he said.

Meanwhile, people in Oxford are taking showers at Oxford High School and charging their cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices any place they can find electricity. Neighbors are helping as much as they can, but even they can't do much because most of them have no power either. As of Wednesday morning, 74 percent of Oxford's CL&P customers, or 3,843 customers, were still without power. 

CL&P has pledged to have fewer than 100,000 customers without power as of Saturday and full restoration by next Wednesday. As of today, more than 300,000 customers are without electricity – or about a quarter of the areas the utility serves in the state. The hardest hit areas are along the coast and eastern part of the state, Butler said.

The company has admitted it made missteps in its response to the storm, namely assuming that crews whose employers had promised to send them to Connecticut for the restoration effort would come.

CL&P said while it had lined up the workers in preparation for the storm and were expecting them to be in place by Saturday, some didn’t show up or were delayed 12 to 20 hours, which apparently left the company in a bind, Butler said.

“We got to a point we were verifying where each crew was,” he said. “Hopefully you can appreciate how frustrating that is.”

Butler said better managing the import of crews from other jurisdiction was among the lessons learned for the company.

“It’s an area that we’ll look into,” he said.

For now, the company is focused on making sure town centers have their power back within the next 36 hours so that grocery stores and gas stations can re-open, Butler said.

Oxford, which doesn't have a defined town center, per say, has power at Town Hall and the library, in the Town Hall basement, but doesn't have power on much of the rest of Route 67. Just about all of Oxford's commercial district did not have power as of Wednesday morning.

The magnitude of the damage has proved daunting, with the eastern sections of the state and coastline suffering the most damage, Butler said.

“It’s by far the worst storm,” he said.

As of the moment the company has 800 line crews and 400 tree crews, each made up of two workers, trying to restore electricity throughout the state, Butler said.

The total cost of the effort is about $75 million, and under state law the company is allowed to seek permission from the state to raise rates in order to pay for the cost.

Oxford Patch editor Paul Singley contributed to this report.