MA Power Outages And Restoration Updates, Friday March 9

BOSTON, MA — Things are getting worse before they are getting better. The power outages have increased to more than 200,000 customers as of early Friday evening, according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. That number is tens of thousands more outages than were reported earlier in the day.

National Grid and Eversource had already warned it would take days to completely restore power. Both companies are aiming for Sunday night to have full restoration.

"We know back-to-back Nor’easters have been a tremendous hardship for our customers and we have hundreds of crews working on restorations," National Grid said at 5 p.m. Friday. "We expect to be fully restored in the hardest hit areas, including Merrimack Valley, by midnight Sunday."

The Merrimack Valley was indeed the hardest-hit area: North Andover had more than 11,000 outages - which was 88 percent of customers - and smaller Boxford had 97 percent of customers without power. On the North Shore, nearly 8,500 customers in Newbury were without power, and 99 percent of Newburyport customers were still in the dark.

"We do not have any estimated restoration times at this moment, but will provide them as soon as we have them. Please plan to be without power for multiple days as we work through this restoration," Eversource said Thursday.

You can report outages to Eversource at 1-800-592-2000 and to National Grid at 1-800- 465-1212

See how many National Grid customers were without power as of 7 a.m., per county:

• Berkshire: 0
• Bristol: Fewer than 5 (Power restoration ETA: Saturday, midnight)
• Essex: 32,374 (Power restoration ETA: Sunday, midnight)
• Franklin: 0
• Hampden: 0
• Hampshire: 0
• Middlesex: 42,691 (Power restoration ETA: TBA)
• Nantucket: 0
• Norfolk: 282 (Power restoration ETA: Saturday, midnight)
• Plymouth: Fewer than 5 (Power restoration ETA: Friday, 9 p.m.)
• Suffolk: Fewer than 5 (Power restoration ETA: Friday, 7 p.m.)
• Worcester: 2,377 (Power restoration ETA: Saturday, midnight)

Eversource does not post estimated restoration times on their website, but said they would give ETAs where possible on Twitter. More than 23,500 Eversource customers were without power at 7 p.m., which is 2 percent of the company's Massachusetts customer base.

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Photo courtesy Brookline Police