Thousands of power outages in Danbury area restored
After equipment failures spurred widespread outages causing thousands of Eversource customers to lose power in the Danbury area, the power company is reporting the issue has been remedied.
The tail-end of a Connecticut heatwave coupled with a thunderstorm affected Eversource equipment and left more than 8,500 customers without power across the state, many of which were in the Danbury area.
Approximately 5,000 Ridgefield residents lost power Wednesday afternoon due to a “heat-related problem” at one of the substations in town. The number of outages in Ridgefield significantly dropped by 5:00 p.m., lowering the count to 1,340 and since then have all been restored.
Around 7:15 p.m., 2,000 outages were reported in Danbury following the storm and by 8:10 p.m., 1,600 in Sherman — roughly 81 percent of the town — had also lost power.
Mitch Gross, an Eversource spokesperson, said all of the reported outages directly related to last night’s storm were “cleaned up.”
A small number of new outages were reported in New Milford, Sherman and Washington Thursday morning, which Gross confirmed were new.
New Milford Mayor Pete Bass noted there were additional outages but that they were “pretty much taken care of” and that the town’s Eversource liaison was “very communicative.”
Sherman First Selectman Don Lowe similarly said the outages reported today stemmed from a different issue. He explained that a tree “took out some wires” at Orchard Rest Road, but has since been fixed.
According to Lowe, the mass outage Wednesday lasted about an hour and a half and was linked to a
problem at “one main artery,” which subsequently took out most of the town in one shot.
“We have a strong emergency services team and everyone was on point and did what they were supposed to do last night,” he said, adding that the response and communication from Eversource was “strong” as well.