‘We’re literally trapped here’
Bertmor Drive neighborhood blocked by tree, still currently powerless
STAMFORD — Some of the residents of Bertmor Drive heard a crack early Tuesday afternoon as Tropical Storm Isaias battered the city. To others, the impact sounded like a boom or thud.
They all saw the same aftermath: Outside the Maloney family’s home at the street’s intersection with Club Road, an oak tree that stood more than 100 feet high had been ripped apart. Part of the dissected trunk toppled and destroyed the maple tree in their front yard, while another shard sprawled as far as the other side of the street. An adjacent utility pole was knocked out too, pulling down power lines. The detritus left the deadend thoroughfare impassable by car.
No one was hurt by the destruction, but the neighborhood was still facing a precarious predicament Saturday. The obliterated tree and wires were lying in the roadway, and electricity had not been restored — with several thousand customers elsewhere in the city also struggling without power.
Compounding residents’ anxiety and frustration is what they said has been an infuriatingly slow and uncommunicative response from Eversource, the utility whose handling of the storm has been widely criticized by customers and public officials.
“I would say the response is atrocious, and it’s frankly very hurtful,” Tyler Maloney, 39, who lives with his wife, Martha, and
3-year-old and 1-year-old sons, said in an interview outside the home Saturday morning. “We're literally trapped here.”
In a press release Saturday, Eversource said it was conducting “around-theclock” restorations and that it expected to have the “vast majority” of Connecticut customers without power back online by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday — and that many would be reconnected sooner.
More than 3,000 line and tree workers have been deployed around the state, according to company officials.
“We are working nonstop to get everyone back on,” Eversource spokesman Mitch Gross told Hearst Connecticut Media on Saturday afternoon. “We understand the sense of urgency associated with this. This continues to be all hands on deck with additional line workers and tree workers coming into Connecticut as we speak.”
A message left for a spokesman of Stamford Mayor David Martin was not immediately returned.
Fraught situation
As the storm descended Tuesday, some residents and workers in the neighborhood narrowly averted a disaster.
Amy Scorziello and her husband were moments from pulling into their driveway when it tumbled.
They live in the house directly across the street from the Maloneys, and part of the fallen tree now abuts their front yard.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier was making his stops farther down the street.
“Five or 10 seconds sooner, who knows,” Scorziello said. “We were seconds away. We heard the boom and saw the shaking of the tree. It was crazy.”
But residents’ relief about the lack of casualties soon turned into consternation.
Maloney said that on Tuesday he called 911 and the Stamford Police Department’s non-emergency line without getting through. He spoke briefly with an Eversource representative on Thursday and said he was told that the utility was doing all it could and was dispatching crews to assess damage. He said he has since only received automated updates from Eversource.
No Eversource crews have showed up yet on the street, according to Maloney and several of his neighbors. They were heartened by the appearance of some firefighters on Wednesday and Thursday, but their visit was apparently limited to assessing the damage.
“My kids can’t even go outside, and no one can give us a definitive answer if the power lines are actually safe,” said Maloney, who has lived on Bertmor drive since early 2017. “We shouldn't have to live with that type of danger. We're taxpaying citizens.”
Across the state, more than 6,100 tree issues and about 200 miles of downed lines related to Isaias have been reported, according to Eversource. The tree problems and the amount of outages are comparable to the numbers from Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
“It’s all about getting to each one of these issues as quickly and safely as we can,” Gross said. “Unfortunately, there are issues that do not have quick fixes.”
Isaias’ toll on Bertmor Drive extends beyond the toppled oak. A few yards away, another utility pole fell down. Its wires are strewn in the road.
Those who live farther down the street have to walk under the lines to reach its junction with Club Road, which is an offshoot of Newfield Avenue. Some of them gasped Saturday morning as they watched an electrician flick wires out of his way as he walked to a house. They did not dare do the same.
The other utility post’s collapse also knocked out a transformer, which leaked fluid until someone came to contain the mess by sanding the road and setting down a tube-like contraption.
With a number of young children on the street, those hazards acutely worry residents. The lack of vehicular access for first responders has created another concern since a number of senior citizens live on Bertmor Drive, some of whom have preexisting conditions.
“We just want to know who it is. Is it the city, or is it Eversource?” said
Zareen Husain, another of the street’s residents. “Who’s going to take the first step?”
At the peak of the disruption, Isaias is estimated to have left nearly 10,000 of Eversource’s Stamford customers without power.
By 5 p.m. Saturday, that number had dropped to about 3,200, comprising 5 percent of Eversource’s customer base in the city. At that point, 19 percent of the utility’s nearly 1.3 million customers statewide still had not been reconnected.
More than 125,000 customers have had their service restored statewide since Friday, according to Gross.
Elected officials, however, are deeply dissatisfied.
Martin Thursday condemned Eversource’s performance as “abysmal.”
A day earlier, Gov. Ned Lamont requested an investigation by the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority of the storm preparations of Eversource and United Illuminating. He rebuked the utilities for “wholly inadequate” responses and said they had not met their obligations to customers.
Awaiting action
Estimated times for power restoration, for each of the 149 cities and towns in the state that Eversource serves, were posted Saturday afternoon on eversource.com. The “vast majority” of Stamford customers are expected to be reconnected by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, according to the website.
“We understand everyone wants to know when their power will be restored as quickly as possible,” Gross said, when asked why Eversource had not posted the estimates sooner. “But some additional damage assessment had to be done, and we want to provide the most accurate information.”
While they wait for the arrival of line and tree workers, those on Bertmor Drive said they were trying to stay calm.
“Sandy — that’s when I bought the generator. That was like five days without power,” 79-year-old Dick Bruce, who has lived on the street for 40 years, said as his generator hummed. He looked out at the USPS truck, still parked outside his house, that had avoided the tree falling.
Other families like the Maloneys do not have generators. To get food, water and other essentials, Tyler Maloney made a path in his front yard wide enough to move his family’s cars onto Club Road.
“I had to clear this whole lawn by myself,” Maloney said. “I have two kids who are three and one. They can't not eat.”
Among other stopgap solutions, some on the street have used as a staging area the St. Cecilia Church parking lot, which can be reached on foot by walking between a couple of boulders at the street’s dead end.
A UPS worker has been hand-delivering shipments after stopping there. Callie and Adam Betz — who moved to the street about three months ago with their 7-year-old, 6-year-old and 2-year-old daughters — are using the lot to park the car that they rented after the storm.
“We would just love to get out,” Callie Betz said. “That would be ideal.”