STATE OF EMERGENCY

Much of CT still in the dark

Nearly 700,000 utility customers across Connecticut remained in the dark Wednesday night after a day of damage assessments from the storm that slammed the region Tuesday afternoon.

Tropical Storm Isaias, which hit early Tuesday afternoon, brought heavy rains and roaring winds that ripped down hundreds, if not thousands, of trees throughout the state.

The storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of Eversource and United Illuminating customers in Connecticut and caused hazardous road conditions with wires, trees and debris coating the roadways.

Gov. Ned Lamont declared a statement of emergency in Connecticut early Wednesday morning. By late Wednesday afternoon, the governor announced he had submitted a request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a presidential emergency declaration.

The declaration would let the state request direct federal aid to supplement state and local efforts as repairs, power restorations and clean up continue. United Illuminating reported 89,273 customers without power as of 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, while Eversource reported 613,814 outages.

Eversource said power restoration would likely continue for “multiple days.”

Lamont met with executives of Eversource, including CEO James Judge, for about 45 minutes late Wednesday afternoon at the company’s main operations center in Berlin.

“I want them to feel the sense of urgency that we felt,” Lamont said after the meeting, as an Eversource vice president stood by. “I want to make sure that we put every person we can on the table to make sure that we take care of this. I don’t want any excuses.”

Michael Hayhurst, vice president of electric operations in Connecticut, said the impact of Tropical Storm Isaias was “greater than Superstorm Sandy” in terms of power outages.

One of the hardest hit communities in the state was Westport, which as of 7 p.m. Wednesday reported nearly 97 percent of Eversource customers in town without power. Westport’s Emergency Management Team said clean up efforts and power restoration will take days.

Hayhurst said the “fierce winds” caused “widespread power outages and historic damage.”

He said Eversource crews are

headed to the skies to assess the overhead equipment across the state, while using patrols on the ground. He said this will let the company “efficiently deploy our resources to get power restored for all of our customers.”

Lamont on Wednesday took issue with the response to the outages by the state’s utility companies, requesting the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority investigate the state’s public utility companies during the widespread outages.

The governor said he asked PURA to investigate the specific steps the companies took leading up to the storm, especially since it hit along the path set out days prior by meteorologists.

He called the response by the utility companies “wholly inadequate.”

More than 24 hours after the storm hit, over 90 state roads across Connecticut remained closed because of debris, trees or wires down on the roadways.

During Tuesday’s storm, many homes and vehicles were damaged by falling trees and tree limbs.

Wednesday afternoon, insurance company State Farm reported 340 homeowner claims and 130 auto claims in Connecticut following Tuesday’s damaging storm.

In Naugatuck, 66-year-old Raymond Schultz was in the area of Andrew Mountain Road and Red Maple Court at 3:30 p.m. when he got out of his car to move branches from the road and was hit by a falling tree. He died from his injuries.

A man walking in front of the Newhalls Package Store in New Haven suffered a broken leg and cuts on his other leg when he was also hit by a falling tree during the storm.

A Branford police officer fled from his cruiser and sheltered inside a nearby home when trees and wired started falling around him at the height of the storm.

As a member of the Brookfield Volunteer Fire Company helped the victim of a car crash during the storm, a tree fell on his personal vehicle. The fire company said the firefighter “barely escaped being seriously hurt” but his vehicle was “badly damaged.”

Lamont