Linemen grounded by whipping winds
Battle to get customers’ power back
Freezing wind gusts that made bucket trucks unsafe for linemen complicated power companies’ ability to restore electricity to the thousands of Bay State customers who were still in the dark last night amid whipping winds and wet, heavy snow.
Eversource Energy and National Grid appeared to have handled the storm better than their projections of more than 100,000 people without power. By 8:30 p.m., the companies had about 8,150 people without power, down from a peak of 25,000 at 5 p.m.
But the winds hampered even the best efforts of electric crews to reconnect blacked-out neighborhoods, as 40 mph-plus gusts kept linemen on the ground and hindered their ability to fix poles and wires in bucket trucks.
Jon Koning of State Electric, a storm contractor for Eversource Energy during the storm, told the Herald his 12 crews — a convoy of trucks packed with 28 linemen — were grounded by winds higher than 30 mph.
“We are doing what we can when we can,” Koning said, heading to a downed wire in the hardhit southeastern Massachusetts town of Marion.
Koning, who’s worked through all the major hurricanes up and down the Atlantic coast, said he worries that dropping temperatures will slow down restoration work.
“Cold always slows us down,” Koning said. “We always get through it but the colder it gets, the harder it gets. Things freeze up. Things break. The wire is a very brittle thing. You’re working long days in the cold. Men get fatigued quicker.”
Eversource Energy said it restored power to at least 30,000 customers yesterday and had about 15,000 customers still in the dark last night.
“We are out there in pretty miserable conditions restoring power because we understand that behind this storm is very severe cold weather, while is why we’ve urged customers to take extra precautions,” Eversource spokesman Mike Durand said.
Although flooding in Chatham prompted the town to ask Eversource to cut power for 2,000 customers as a safety precaution, Durand said high water levels wasn’t a major issue for restoration crews.
Once the storm’s track was clear, Durand said Eversource relocated crews from western Massachusetts to the southeastern part of the state and the Cape.
“Much of the storm damage we’ve seen has been wind-related, and in some cases, that is combined with heavy wet snow to make trees more susceptible to breaking and damage to the electric system,” Durand said.
National Grid spokesman Robert Kievra said about 5,000 of its customers were without power as of 5:30 p.m., though the company planned to have power completely restored last night. Its worst-hit areas were in Essex County, especially Gloucester and Rockport.
“The big concern is high winds which limit us to be able to restore power,” Kievra said. “We try to keep our trucks down if the wind speeds are 30 mph or above. That slows us down a little bit. We think we’ve got through the worst of it but we still want to get those 5,000 people back.”