Many Towns in the Region Won't Have Full Power Until Tuesday

When he learned today that his power isn't projected to come back on until Tuesday - 10 days after Tropical Storm Irene swept through the state - George Ducharme of East Hampton wasted little time issuing CL&P a message.

“I’m at my wit’s end,” he said. “We can’t even flush our toilets because we have no water. I just don’t understand their logic.”

Ducharme was at the town’s operations center at the high school Friday morning picking up a few bottles of drinking water. He lives on Bevin Court, near the village center, and said the pace of the power restoration especially frustrates him because both his neighbors have power. A line that serves his home, he said, is down, and power crews who came out to his road days ago fixed other damaged lines, but not his.

“It’s ridiculous.”

Several towns in central Connecticut today are grappling with CL&P’s most updated projections showing their towns won’t get fully restored to power until Tuesday, Sept. 6. The towns are part of CL&P’s East Hampton Work Center and include East Haddam, East Hampton, Marlborough, Colchester and Glastonbury.

In Glastonbury, power has been coming back in dribs and drabs all week, officials in the town’s emergency operations center said today. About 75 percent of the town has power today, but the town’s main business district along Main Street didn’t get fully restored until yesterday, they said.

The remaining 25 percent of those without power, some 3,791 CL&P customers, are getting increasingly agitated.

“It’s terrible,” said Robert Dibella the town’s emergency services director. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen it.” He abruptly ends the interview to take a call from a local resident.

“This woman is going crazy,” he said as he picked up the phone to talk to her. “Do you have enough food? Tell us where you are. You’re stressed out, I know. I’m stressed out and I’ve lost my voice.”

Donna Donovan, a volunteer working with Dibella, said people still without power are running out of food, water and patience. She said she’s hoping the rest of her town doesn’t have to wait until Tuesday for full restoration.

She lives in Glastonbury and finally got her power back last night.

“I was with some of my neighbors, eating dinner by candlelight, when one of them said ‘Look, there’s light coming from under the basement door.’ We were all like ‘Yay!’ and then we opened a bottle of wine.”

CL&P is projecting Glastonbury will be full restored by 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Across the region schools that delayed opening because of Irene are now projecting to open by Tuesday, though some districts are beginning to question whether that will be possible.

In East Hampton, for instance, School Superintendent Judith Golden said Memorial Elementary School is without power, even though the neighborhood around it isn’t. She said she’s awaiting an update from the town’s emergency services director on what the problem is.

Right now, the first day of school is supposed to be Tuesday, which was moved back a week because of the outages. Golden said she is sticking with that opening day, though she left open the possibility that date could change because some roads in town are still impassable by school buses.

“We have four days left before we have to make that determination,” Golden said about the possibility of postponing again the first day of school. “But as of this time we are having school on Sept. 6.”

She said if the buses can’t get down some roads parents may have to drive their children to school.

Golden, like other officials in the region, expressed mounting frustration with information from CL&P about local outages.

“We’re at the mercy of these companies,” she said.  “We just have to wait and see.”

About half of the town’s 6,079 customers are still without power and CL&P now is projecting the town will be fully restored by 6 p.m. Tuesday.

In East Haddam, an alert sent out by Craig Mansfield, the town’s emergency services director, said the town has gotten some power back, such as in Moodus Center, where residents can get food and gasoline.

Still, there are 40 roads in town that are impassable because of downed trees and much of the town is still without power.  Schools there are also projected to open Tuesday and CL&P says the town should be fully restored to power by 6 p.m. Tuesday.

About 60 percent, or 3,000, of CL&P’s customers in East Haddam remain without power.

In Chester, the downtown got power back as of Thursday and businesses downtown have reopened. The town is not expected to have all of its power back until 11 p.m., Tuesday and schools are projected to open on Wednesday, Sept. 7.

Portions of routes 154 and 148 have power again and Chester officials said CL&P is actively working throughout the town. The initial focus is on restoring power along main arteries, then on side streets. Some people have both cable and telephone service; others have one or the other. Those utilities, officials said, will be addressed after power lines have been cleared.

About 72 percent, or 1,500, of CL&P’s customer in Chester don’t have power.

In Colchester and Marlborough both towns have power back in their main business districts, but CL&P is projecting both towns won’t have 100 percent restoration until 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Both towns currently expect to start school on Tuesday. In Colchester ice is available at Fire Company 1 (one bag per household), and showers are open at the Bacon Academy gym for all residents 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday Sunday and Monday.

Colchester has 2,923 customers still without power, 60 percent of CL&P customers in that town. In Marlborough, there are 462 customers still without power, or 17 percent of customers in that town.