Utilities report big declines in power outages

Nov 05 - Connecticut Post

More residents have power Saturday evening, but there's still more than 114,000 customers waiting for electricity to come back on.

United Illuminating is reporting 32,306 customers are still without power, about 10 percent of its service area. That's down more than 32,000 customers from a day ago. There are big declines in the number of Bridgeport residents who lost power. Saturday morning, about 6 percent of the city was still without power. Yet still, there are a number of UI-served towns that have significant power outages. Weston, 90 percent; Redding, about 76 percent; Easton, 45 percent; Trumbull, 17 percent and Fairfield about 37 percent.

UI officials said its goal for Saturday was to restore an additional 15,000 to 20,000 customers. Between 10 a.m. to 5 p.m, UI had restored power to an additional 9,178 customers.

CL&P is also reporting big declines in power outages, about 6 percent of its customers -- 82,159 customers. However, Greenwich, Darien, Westport and Ridgefield still have nearly half of its residents without electricity. Stamford has 7,070 customers without power; Norwalk, 8,231 or 27 percent.

UI crews concentrated on "bulk" repairs that can restore service to 1,000 or more customers at a time, they said.

James Torgerson, chief executive of UI Holdings, the utility's parent company, said that the power company had "more resources on the ground at the start of (Hurricane) Sandy than we did at the peak of Irene," the August 2011 tropical storm.

More than 500 linemen and 375 tree workers are working in UI's 17-town service area, Torgerson said, along with 100 service people who are licensed electricians repairing meters and feeder wires for individual property owners.

Since Sandy left Connecticut, both United Illuminating and Connecticut Light & Power and have reduced the peak of 640,000 customer outages by more than 75 percent.

UI has said it will have 95 percent of its customers by midnight Monday. CL&P's estimate is Monday or Tuesday.

"Our crews have made significant progress yesterday evening and will continue to work around the clock until all customers are restored," said James P. Torgerson, UIL's chief executive officer. "We continue to have crews dispersed all over the UI service territory working diligently to restore power."

UI has also been in contact with the Secretary of State's office and has communicated the status of polling centers that were initially without electric service. UI has 192 polling centers within its service territory and all but five of those now have power. The company plans to have emergency generation in place, if necessary for the five remaining facilities thereby making sure those citizens will not be avoided their right to vote on Tuesday.

"We understand how important it is to make sure citizens are not disenfranchised and be able to participate in our great democracy," said Anthony J. Vallillo, UI's president and chief operating officer. "Therefore, it was important to that we developed a plan to get power to polling centers we serve."

On its web site, CL&P (cl-p.com) has a timetable of estimated power restoration times, based on zip code.

Nearly all towns -- including Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, New Canaan, Norwalk, Westport, Wilton, Weston and Ridgefield -- list 11 p.m. Tuesday as the estimated restoration time.

President Barack Obama said Saturday that "there's nothing more important than us getting this right" as he visited the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for an update on superstorm recovery efforts before beginning a final weekend of campaigning before Election Day.

"Obviously we've now seen that after the initial search and rescue, the recovery process is difficult and it's painful," he said. "But I'm confident that we will continue to make progress as long as state and local and federal officials stay focused."

The White House sent several Cabinet secretaries to Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.

"What I told the governors and the mayors, what I've been saying to my team from the start of this event -- that is we don't have any patience for bureaucracy, we don't have any patience for red tape and we want to make sure that we are figuring a way to get to yes as opposed to no when it comes to these problems," Obama said.

He cited the need to restore power; pump out water, particularly from electric substations; ensure that people's basic needs are addressed; remove debris; and getting federal resources in place to help transportation systems come back on line.

"There's nothing more important than us getting this right and we're going to spend as much time, effort and energy as necessary to make sure that all the people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut know that the entire country is behind them in this difficult recovery effort. And we are going put not just 100 percent but 120 percent behind making sure that they get the resources that they need to rebuild and recover," Obama said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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