Power Restored to 'Virtually Everyone' Today

Town Manager Paul Cohen said power has been restored to about 90 percent of the town's residents, and National Grid will work on the isolated pockets of town without power today.

More than 30 line crews and 15 tree crews worked in town yesterday to restore power to the 25 percent of households without it - about 3,600 customers.

After , kids are back in classrooms today and many residents are back home from hotels or their friend's houses where they were keeping warm or taking showers.

Cohen said aside from communicating more frequently, there wasn't much more National Grid could have done to restore power faster, since it was such a widespread event.

"There are people here from Michigan and North Carolina," he said. "National Grid wouldn't have hired even more people here because of one storm. People aren't going to want to see their electric bills go up to pay for it."

Cohen said he knows how frustrating it is for residents to see their neighbors who perhaps have power, but they do not.

"and the , even though they're next door, are on different feeders," said Cohen. The Police Station went off their generator and on to regular power today.

According to National Grid, As of 3:30 p.m. yesterday, National Grid had restored power to 350,000 customers, with approximately 69,000 customers still without service.

“I’ve seen firsthand the damage and devastation the storm caused and have spoken to many customers and local officials in our communities and I know how hard this is for them,” said Marcy Reed, president, National Grid, Massachusetts in a press release.  "We're concerned about the well-being of our customers and neighbors, and we're pressing ahead as fast as we can with repairs and restorations.  We’re now in the most painstaking phase of the restoration where we have to go street by street and house by house to make repairs, often to restore small numbers of customers."

The town is now working on clearing downed trees and limbs from the streets. Cohen said the Department of Public Works will start on main roads and work their way to the side streets and more isolated parts of town afterward. Cohen said collections will also take place on the weekend, hoping to get it all clear before more snow arrives.

Cohen said open burning season does not begin until Jan. 15.

Cathy Ribeck of said her restaurant finally got power back in time to open for lunch and dinner yesterday.

"I had to do some quick shopping to replace food until we could receive regular orders from our vendors, but most of them understood and were here for us with what we needed to get up and running for (last night)," she said. "  ...  It is tough to be such a new business and then lose three days of business. We are normally closed on Mondays so we only lost three days. Power went out here about 9:30 on Saturday night."

Lynn Marcella, owner of said quite a few people stopped in to use the copy center, which never lost power.

"We have had a pretty busy week with people coming in to make copies, use our fax service and have documents printed out because their home or office systems are out," she said. "We offer people a desk and warm spot near our sunny window where they can catch up on paper work, plug in their phones and get warm."

Marcella said one man in particular was very grateful the store was open.

"I had a young man come in that had no power and had a big job offer.  He needed to have documents relative to the job offer printed out and fax them.  He was so thrilled once it all got done that he gave me a big hug," she said.