North Shore Nor'Easter: Thousands Still In Dark As Storm Departs

SALEM, MA — More than 12 hours after many North Shore homes lost power amid the fierce winds of the October nor'easter thousands remained in the dark Wednesday night.

According to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, more than 3,500 residents of Beverly, Salem and Swampscott were among the 45,000 state residents without electricity as night fell.

MEMA said there were 1,495 Beverly residents, 1,789 Salem residents and 502 Swampscott residents without power as of 7:30 p.m.

Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Kathleen Theoharides said at a news conference with Gov. Charlie Baker that utility companies have brought extra crews in from as far away as Canada to help with the restoration of electricity, but she said the "timeline is approximately multi-day" for a systemwide restoration.

Salem State University first canceled morning classes at its South Campus because of outages but eventually had to either cancel or make classes remote in the afternoon as the campus remained without power.

"Faculty members are contacting students directly about evening classes, as some will be moved online, to a different location or maybe canceled," the school said in a message late Wednesday afternoon. "National Grid is working to restore electricity to that area of Salem."

Earlier outages in Danvers, Marblehead and Peabody were reported restored.

The Marblehead Municipal Light Department said it had to kill power to the entire town to safely clear trees from high-voltage feeder lines from Salem overnight, but had power restored townwide by late morning, while crews worked with mutual aid from Groveland and Merrimac to help individual homes with wind or tree damage.

Danvers crews had just cleared early morning damage on Wednesday when a large tree went down on Locust Street and impacted Valley, Lakeview and Robin Hill roads about 8:30 a.m. Officials said power was restored in that area by around 4 p.m.

"I think it's really important we make sure we give these guys and gals enough room to actually do the work they need to do to clean the trees out, clean the roads up so that we can then get people up into the bucket trucks and get everybody's power back," Baker said.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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