Patience Wears Thin for Residents Without Power

Utility company executives now say some areas of the state could still be without electricity until the middle of next week.

That was the message Wednesday after Gov. Dannel P. Malloy again briefed the media on the damages wrought by Irene and the efforts to restore power.

“Obviously the issue in Connecticut right now is power,” Malloy said. “Power, power, power. It is on everybody’s mind. Who is without it, and everybody who has it is grateful to have it, and that tells you what type of commodity it is.”

After a brief update on actions the state has taken in recent days to provide support and relief services to affected municipalities, Malloy turned the briefing over to the chief executives of Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating, the state’s two largest electrical providers.

“Usually an outage when you have a storm is an inconvenience for customers, but this has gone to where it’s a hardship for many customers,” said James Torgerson, UI's chief executive officer. “We understand loss of electricity is a big problem for people.”

CL&P's Chief Operating Officer Jeff Butler said his company had restored over 870,000 customers who lost power as a result of the storm as of Wednesday afternoon, but still had nearly 300,000 customers without power.

Butler said CL&P had about 950 crews working across the state to restore power, but the number could increase to as 1,200 crews by the weekend. He said additional management personnel was also being brought in from Massachusetts and New Hampshire subsidiaries to help coordinate the restoration effort.

“1,200 crews is a massive amount of people to manage, so we’re bringing the structure in place to ensure we maintain that efficiency,” he said.

Torgerson said that UI typically employs about 65 crews to handle its power restoration issues, but were up to 275 crews working throughout the state and had 33 more crews expected from Indiana and Wisconsin expected to join them by tomorrow morning.

Both Butler and Torgerson said that the electrical companies would continue to provide constant updates of the restoration efforts through their websites, social media and the press. 

“What customers really want to know, and we understand their frustration, is when their power will be restored,” Butler said. “Not knowing, it just really continues to build that frustration”

William Bryan, a deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy who was helping to coordinate the state’s power restoration efforts, said the electrical companies's response efforts are above the national average. He said after a large storm like Irene, 60 to 70 percent of customers would typically see their power restored within three to six days, while restoration for the remaining 30 percent could take as long as 10 days to two weeks.

Both CL&P and UI have stated that they hope to have all customers restored by the middle of next week.