ABOUT TOWN: National Grid Talks About Stoughton's Power Outages

MOST STOUGHTON RESIDENTS TO BE POWERED BY FRIDAY NIGHT: 

Stoughton still had 1,100 customers without power as of last night at 9 p.m, according to Marie Jordan, a V.P. of National Grid.  [Editor’s note: The National Grid website indicates Stoughton had a little more than 1,600 customers without power as of 8 a.m. on Friday. National Grid is looking into the discrepancy between the two numbers].

About Town, in an extensive interview on Thursday with Marcy Reed, President of National Grid of Massachusetts, and Marie Jordan, a V.P./engineer at National Grid, learned that the nightmare for our town should be ended for most by Friday night.

However, according to Jordan, “Some stragglers could see the power disruption last through Sunday.”

The first question I asked both ladies was why Stoughton was allowed to fall so far behind in the restoration efforts. During the past several days, we had the in the area.

Reed said she understood why I wasn’t happy about their results in Stoughton, “but we now have over 90% of those who lost power there restored.”

Jordan explained that Stoughton had nine broken poles and 18 trees down.

“We spent a significant amount of time there,” she said. “[Wednesday], 10 crews were deployed. That was 25% of all of our local crews. There was a lot of heavy damage on the line. We worked all day long and were not able to pick up customers rapidly. We had 13 spans of wire that needed replacement. One job needed six poles.

“We got an additional 10 crews [Thursday]. Now half our crews are there. Stoughton had 10,000 customers out at the start. It was one of the five hardest hit towns. We’re down to 1,600 customers out now [as of Thursday]. We think by 8 p.m. [Thursday], we’ll pick up all the main lines. Full restoration will take a few more days. The biggest issue was the significant amount of tree damage.”

When asked about the number of crews earlier in the week—and the difficult time Town Manager Frank Crimmins had verifying them, Jordan said, “We took the Town Manager and the Police Chief around for a tour of the crews.

“It’s not obvious for everyone to see,” she continued. “They are not all in the street. Some are in the woods. They were taken to all twenty locations. He understands now why they weren’t readily seen when he went looking for them. He was frustrated by one of our municipal calls.”

Crimmins told me Thursday afternoon that National Grid didn't create the storm. But, he added, "As recently as Wednesday we had more customers out that any other local community. It didn't make sense to me. You eliminate outages by dedicating crews to the community. They weren't dedicating crews to us.

“I think we finally got the attention of folks at National Grid. I was finally satisfied by what I saw on Thursday. I still have no power myself. We need to do whatever is necessary to get everyone back online.”

As for what Jordan said, Crimmins added, "My concern was Tuesday morning they told us what they had going on and it didn't materialize. By Wednesday morning, we had a situation that I was skeptical of the assets on the field. In the last two days, we had a greater commitment of assets. I don't know why we couldn't have had more assets earlier." 

It appears that Crimmins and Police Chief Paul Shastany actually took a National Grid employee around with them to make sure that the crews were actually positioned as promised, not the other way around.

Jordan explained that there were a lot of non-electrically qualified employees out on the streets and that some misinformation came from some of them.

She told me, “The people in the pickup trucks are different than those in bucket trucks. We tried to get over 1,000 additional crews into our service area. When we put the call out, the additional resources weren’t there. They are now. They’re coming from as far away as Quebec.

“We didn’t have the numbers of electrically qualified employees we needed. Our employees are doing 18-hour shifts, with six hours off. They are maxed out. Thirty more crews are now in the service area. A quarter of all of our available crews are now in Stoughton.”

I asked what steps they have taken to stop a repeat of this abysmal performance. I wanted to know if it was a real hurricane, if we’d have lost power for a month.

Reed responded that, “This storm was one of our biggest challenges in my 23 years here. All of our surrounding utilities could not lend a hand. We were all on our own and we usually have mutual aid. Day 4 and 20 additional crews is not normal. A storm like this comes once every 30 or 40 years.

“We will simply return to the practice of having mutual aid crews show up. By the time came here she was downgraded. But, remember, we had six million people without power. That doesn’t happen very often. We just couldn’t get mutual aid, because it was an unusual storm. But, I’ll admit, we need to be more visible and upfront.”

When asked if any rebates, or monetary compensation are planned for those of us who lived like we were in a third world country, and had to throw out hundreds of dollars of food; or for business owners who were forced to close, and employees who could not get a paycheck, Reed said:

“We’re focused on getting the lights back on. No determination on rebates has been made. Reality is that as part of our regulated rate agreement, we do not reimburse for food spoilage. We’re seeing extraordinary circumstances, and I’m willing to talk about it after restoration.”

I asked about the good name of National Grid (which I’ve nicknamed ). It has been spoiled as much as the food in a dead refrigerator.

Reed told me, “I’m well aware of the taste in the mouths of our customers. I thank them for their patience during this time. We’ve been here over 100 years, and we try to do our job well and safely. We’ve never had this many customers out at once—840,000 in New England alone. We had 300,000 outage calls online and on the phone from this state alone.

"The category of hurricane was not related to what we encountered on the ground.”

Jordan added, “The number of wires down really impacted our ability to respond and stretched our resources. We had 1,100 ‘911 calls’ in the area alone. Wires down were a priority. It was a huge focus. We needed the police and fire to get back to doing what they need to do."

I said that I thought this event, and the slow response of National Grid, would help the Muni Choice Bill pass through Beacon Hill. It would allow individual towns to offer electricity to its residents.

Reed said, “I think people will definitely be talking about it. Looking at it the way I do, right now we can share resources around. We have employees all over N.E. to help us. If someone else purchases the assets, and works on their own, the end result is that no town is going to have 20 bucket trucks. We’ll see chatter about the bill for sure.” 

It should be pointed out that towns could form an electrical mutual aid, much as the fire departments do. And, towns like Norwood and Braintree, which have their own power companies, had no problems during the storm.

I asked Reed if she had a message for the people of Stoughton. She said, “I’d like to thank the people for their patience. I understand they’re not happy with us. We will earn our good reputation back.”

I also told Reed that National Grid needs to make HUMANS available to talk with when we call them. All of us are quite sick of their voicemail system for reporting problems.

She replied, “There were 80,000 calls the first day into the call center, and 250,000 inputs through computers reporting outages. We have 200 reps, working 24/7. The average call took 20 seconds for answer time. We know most people want to talk to a real live person.

“If they hang on, the can talk. If they can go to a computer, they can look at an estimated time of restoration. We try to make it as accurate as we can. Do we get it right 100% of the time? Absolutely not.”

Jordan added, “All main lines in Stoughton should be back [Thursday night]. Most people will get it back by Saturday night. The vast majority will be back on Friday night. Some stragglers may go into Sunday with individual service challenges. Currently 14% of customers are out. Twenty crews are working in Stoughton. More are coming in [Friday].”