CL&P Provides Update to Emergency Operations Team

CL&P representative Watson Collins briefed the emergency operations team Tuesday morning on the status of power restoration in West Hartford.

"There is still a lot of work to be done and this is worse than anything we have seen before," Collins said. "I expect it will be more than a week [from the original time of the outage] for everyone to get power back since there is such extensive damage," Collins said.

On Monday, there were two crews working in West Hartford, mainly clearing the roads. Public Works Director John Phillips said that his staff spent nine hours assisting in the Albany Avenue/Steele Road area, and six hours working on Ridgewood Road near I-84 in order to get those two main arteries clear and safe for travel.

Collins advised that eight line crews and three tree crews are working in West Hartford on Tuesday. The tree crews take care of removing the wires from trees, and public works coordinates their efforts with CL&P to remove the debris from those sites.

The line crews do the actual power restoration work, and many of those crews are traveling from other states to assist with Connecticut's restoration efforts. "What will speed up the restoration effort is getting more outside crews in, but it takes travel time to get them here with their bucket trucks. They're coming from places like Indiana," Collins said.

Efforts to restore the Farmington Avenue corridor working from west to east, and the North Main Street/Mountain Road area from north to south were underway on Tuesday. While those efforts are focusing on getting the major feeder lines repaired, at least another 1,000 customers should have power restored in those areas.

Renee McCue, West Hartford's public relations specialist, stated the following in a release Tuesday morning, "We are meeting with CL&P officials throughout the day and will get you more specific updates when we have the information."

Residents should also be advised that service wires which are down – those that connect service directly to homes – in most cases will not be picked up by the line crews. Those who have service wires down should advise CL&P, and a different crew will handle that repair.

In addition, residents whose conduits (the junction boxes attached to the outside of the home) have been damaged need to contact an electrician to reconnect the box before CL&P can restore power. This will expedite the restoration of power to individual homes once CL&P has reconnected the service line.

Wires that are down may still be live, even if there is no power in the area. Phillips said, "The primaries are hot; we've come across many places where the line has melted into the road." Extreme caution should be used wherever there are downed lines.

As of 1:30 p.m., CL&P is still estimating that 97 percent of West Hartford, or 27,385 customers, are still without power.