Cape residents: A powerless feeling

Feb 13 - Cape Cod Times

 

With a generator buzzing in the open door of her breezeway, one of her two bichon dogs yapping at her feet and a small electric heater warming the couch where she had slept under a pile of blankets for the past four nights, Anna Oquendo was clearly flustered.

"Very awful," the Charles Street resident said about living without power.

Oquendo was not alone in her assessment of NStar's response to the widespread power outages from the weekend blizzard that blasted Cape Cod with winds and more than a foot of snow in some places.

Her neighbor Gerri Chicoine said she understood the eight houses on Charles Street still without power Tuesday morning were low on the company's priority list but became frustrated after watching two utility crews parked in the neighborhood seemingly do little to restore power.

With her two young children playing on mattresses set up in the family's living room, Chicoine said the contracted utility crews were very friendly but clearly not local.

"They said, 'We're here to work, and we've never experienced this before,'" Chicoine said, adding that the crews said they couldn't do anything without an order from NStar officials.

After a full day, the crews left, she said.

Some of her Charles Street neighbors had moved out of their cold homes. James Stelk his wife and two young children returned to their house Tuesday to pick up a few things and planned to go to a hotel. "Almost every person in this area has kids," Stelk said. "It just sucks."

Luckily for the Charles Street neighbors, the power was back on and their generators off by about 3 p.m. Tuesday. But their frustration was typical of those still in the dark on Day 4 after the storm.

Unprecedented damage

NStar understands that frustration, said Jim Hunt, vice president of regulatory affairs and community relations for NStar's parent company, Northeast Utilities.

"For those that are still without power, we appreciate their patience," Hunt said Tuesday.

The damage from the weekend blizzard was unprecedented as were the restoration efforts, Hunt said, adding that at the height of the work there were more than 4,000 people working for the company in Southeastern Massachusetts. About 1,000 of them were brought in from other Northeast Utilities service areas and included contract crews from as far away as Florida.

Coordination between the utility, local and state officials, including arrangements to base utility crews at the Massachusetts Military Reservation, helped get power back on as quickly as possible, Hunt said.

"That had never been done before," he said about the use of the military base.

By 9 p.m. Tuesday, 3,160 NStar customers on the Cape were still without power versus 130,000 customers without power in the region at the height of the storm. As of Tuesday evening, there were fewer than five customers without power on Nantucket, which is served by National Grid.

Estimated restoration times provided by NStar for parts of the Cape improved during the day. While the hardest hit areas of Barnstable, Bourne, Falmouth and Sandwich were estimated to be fully restored by Thursday night, other towns on the Lower and Mid-Cape were expected to have all power back by Tuesday night or Wednesday, according to the utility's website.

NStar spokesman Michael Durand said crews such as the ones on Charles Street in South Dennis were working on problems that covered a larger area, which must be addressed before smaller outages could be fixed.

"That tends to be a priority when we're trying to get the system back," Durand said about the larger outages.

Crews might have to wait for further instructions if they have fixed one problem and smaller outages persist, he said.

It's out again

For many customers, getting power back on didn't mean it stayed on.

Kate Kelly of Lothrop's Lane in West Barnstable said her power went out Friday but came back on again Sunday. It was out again Tuesday morning.

Kelly said she lived in Buffalo, N.Y., for 30 years and, despite intense storms there, she had never seen outages similar to those on the Cape in recent years.

"They're geared for it," she said about the electric system and other infrastructure in Buffalo. "It's their way of life."

The most frustrating thing about NStar's response to the storm was the lack of information, Kelly said.

"When you do call, you're not even allowed to speak to anybody," she said about her repeated request to speak with an NStar supervisor.

Public safety officials gave NStar mixed reviews.

Mashpee Fire Chief George Baker said he felt NStar "hit the ball out of the park" in communicating with his department.

He spoke to a community liaison or ambassador from the company 15 to 30 times a day since the storm, Baker said.

In one case, utility officials had a generator delivered to an apartment house on Route 28 when it became apparent power would not be restored there quickly, Baker said.

NStar did the same for the Sandwich High School shelter when power went out there.

The company did a good job in responding to community priorities, which in some cases might have meant four homes at the end of the line had to wait for power while areas that served a lot more people were restored, Baker said.

The blizzard did more damage than Hurricane Sandy on the Cape, Baker said, adding that while the system could always be better, there are costs associated with improvements. "The challenge with that is we don't want our electric bills to increase," he said.

NStar, which was hammered for its response during two powerful storms in 2011, has since created an outage map, an online estimated restoration time listing, and a community liaison and ambassador program for better communications with towns.

But Orleans Fire Chief William Quinn said while he had nothing but praise for the utility's line crews, he still had problems with the way NStar's management handled storm response.

A cut-and-clear crew the utility sent to his fire station Saturday appeared eager to work but came from far off-Cape and told him they had to wait for a company ambassador assigned to the town, Quinn said. "They didn't know the grid," he said.

During a trip Sunday to Barnstable, Quinn spotted eight trucks with out-of-state plates parked off Willow Street.

Almost two hours later, the trucks were still there, he said, adding that he stopped to ask them if they were lost.

"They said,'We don't have supervisor yet, and we don't know the area,'" Quinn said.

Although a Web-based reporting system allowed him to enter his priorities, the company still didn't provide estimated times of arrival for crews, he said.

Quinn, who has been a vocal critic of NStar during past storms, said he appreciated having company representatives to contact directly, but if the communication is only one way, it doesn't help much.

"I feel bad," he said. "I've never had a problem with any one of these crews. They're a talented long-working bunch of guys and gals. It's the direction that they're given."

State Energy and Environmental Secretary Richard K. Sullivan Jr. said that while he appreciated the frustration of customers going into their fifth day without power, NStar appeared to muster the appropriate resources to respond to the outages.

"I think in general it was better," he said, comparing the response to outages in 2011.

State officials will continue to look at what can be improved, including as part of a review of how to modernize the electric grid by the Department of Public Utilities, Sullivan said.

Gov. Deval Patrick has called for a study of the costs and benefits of burying power lines, Sullivan said, adding that such an analysis will be undertaken as part of broader efforts to adapt to more severe weather in the region.

"Certainly these storms do feel like the new normal," he said.

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