Town Manager Sequino Addresses Residents

With frustrated residents calling and coming in to get information, or just to vent, Town Manager Bill Sequino said Wednesday that the town is doing all it can in .

“After three days without power, they’ve reached their limit,” he said of residents. The number of people without power in East Greenwich was down to 1,600 as of Wednesday morning, from a high of more than 5,000 on Sunday. There are still more than 100,000 without power in the state.

State Sen. Dawson Hodgson had been in to talk to Sequino Wednesday morning after receiving calls from South Road constituents who were without power and water, since their wells were on electric pumps.

Sequino said he had passed on that information to National Grid and that, after consulting with Fire Chief Peter Henrikson, the chief said he would leave the bay door open at Fire Station 2 on Frenchtown Road so that people could come and fill containers to use for washing and toilet flushing.

“I can sympathize, because I don’t have power either,” he said. In fact, he said, when he was talking to National Grid on Wednesday, the person on the line said they hadn’t known that his neighborhood - Sequino lives on Walnut Drive - had no power. According to National Grid, no one had called in the outage.

So Sequino urged residents to call National Grid if they hadn’t yet done so, or to contact the Police Department, which would relay the information.

Sequino stressed that Dept. of Public Works crews could not touch downed trees tangled in power lines.

“We don’t go out and touch them unless National Grid gives us the all clear,” he said. One bit of good news from National Grid, Sequino said, was that all the substations for East Greenwich had been energized - which meant that only the feeder lines needed to be brought back on.

Sequino is still without power at home, as is his assistant, Elaine Colarusso. Colarusso - who's been the one fielding most of the calls and visitors - lives just over the EG line in the hard-hit North Quidnesset neighborhood.

“Do I want my power on and do I want it on yesterday?" said Sequino. "Absolutely."