The question on everyone's minds is when they will have heat and lights again and Internet service.
The question on everyone’s minds is when they will have heat and lights again and Internet service.
Following Saturday’s unseasonal snowstorm which snapped countless tree branches and downed countless power lines, there were 100,522 WMECO customers without power late Monday night or about 47 percent of WMECO’s 212,000 customers.
Sandra Ahearn, spokesman for WMECO, said power should be restored to most customers by Wednesday or Thursday, and in some cases, not until Friday.
Ahearn said Saturday’s storm is the most damaging storm in WMECO’s history.
“The damage to the system is like what we have never seen,” Ahearn said. “This is easily the largest storm in terms of damage and customers out that we have ever seen.”
So far more than 50,000 WMECO customers have seen their power restored since the storm trounced the region on Saturday. The peak of the outage left some 150,000 customers in the dark.
WMECO had 75 line crews and 35 tree crews out working in the field Monday. Some crews have come from far away as Michigan, Kansas and Missouri, Ahearn said. More crews are on the way and Tuesday should see a total of 200 line crews and 100 tree crews out repairing the damage.
Richard K. Sullivan Jr., state secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said Monday that storm damage in Western Massachusettts is more significant than that inflicted by the June 1 tornadoes.
“There is much more significant damage in a much wider area,” he said.
Sullivan said there are 1,500 utility and tree crews on the ground in Massachusetts, which is more more than were here for Tropical Storm Irene and the ice storm of 2008.
“I think there have been a lot of lessons leaned from both the ice storm and the tornadoes,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said Western Massachusetts residents who remain without power should “seek shelter if necessary. “The nights are cold, use common sense.”
By late morning Monday there were lines at all open gas stations.
Police were deployed at busy stations, including Breckwood and Wilbraham roads, St. James Ave. and Tapley St., and Bay St. & Berkshire Ave.
Sullivan said the state will bring in generators to help more gasoline stations open for business if needed.
A clerk at the BP station on Main Street said customers were coming from Connecticut just to get gas.
Most public schools will be closed on Tuesday.
In Springfield, the public schools are closed for the remainder of this week due to concerns about safety, city officials announced on Monday.
Municipal officials recommended that trick-or-treaters be kept in Monday night, Halloween, due to hanging wires and the lack of lights. Some communities were planning to reschedule trick-or-treating for the weekend.
Twenty-two schools in Springfield were still without power on Monday, and there were dangerous conditions including damaged trees and limbs and live power lines that could jeopardize safety, said Mayor Domenic J. Sarno and Superintendent of Schools Alan J. Ingram.
Missed days of school will have to be made up, Ingram said.
The Army National Guard is providing assistance with cutting and clearing trees and with traffic control, Sarno said.
In addition, Sarno said he asked the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency to provide 10 additional generators to the city to restore traffic lights at more intersections.
The storm had fatal results in Hatfield, where a 49-year-old woman succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. A man and a woman at 80 Elm St. were taken to Cooley Dickinson Hospital early Sunday morning after state police responded to a report of an unresponsive woman at that address. Nancy Morris was declared dead. The man, whose name police did not divulge, was treated and released. Officials are attributing the incident to carbon monoxide poisoning from a propane heater.
At Squire Village Apartments on Route 116 in Sunderland residents were evacuated because of high carbon monoxide levels.
It was believed that a barbecue contributed to high carbon monoxide levels. Two or three people were brought to the hospital, but were able to return after carbon monoxide levels went down, police said.
U.S. Sen. Scott P. Brown said Monday it seems utilities were unprepared for the October snowstorm that left more than a half million Massachusetts residents without power.
In a sharply-worded letter to the state’s four largest energy providers on Monday, Brown expressed “outrage” over what he claimed was a lack of adequate contingency plans. He said it doesn’t appear utilities had the necessary assets in place to quickly respond to outages caused by the storm.
Brown pointed to similar criticism of the companies after Hurricane Irene.
In contrast, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said earlier in the day it appears that the utility companies’ responses have been “sound.”
The utilities say damage from the snowstorm was even more severe than Irene and they have hundreds of crews working to restore power.
National Grid president Marcy Reed said the utility has applied lessons from Irene by improving communication with residents and officials in the hardest-hit communities.
Tuesday is the five-month anniversary of the June 1 tornado.
Residents of West Springfield’s Merrick section, which was hit hard by the June 1 tornado, found the blizzard another unwelcome weather event.
“We’re still trying to catch up from the tornado,” Erik N. Hudson of 580 Main St. said of the seven nights his family spent in a motel after the June 1 disaster. “That was $200 a day.”
Emergency shelters opened up across Western Massachusetts as residents sought a warm place to sleep and eat.
In Springfield, city residents without power overwhelmed an emergency shelter at Central High School on Monday, exceeding the legal capacity of 400 people, according the city’s health director.
The number of people seeking shelter exceeded 400 at approximately noon, and the city began transferring any new arriving residents to the regional shelter at Chicopee High School, said Helen R. Caulton-Harris, the city’s director of health and human services.
In Hampden Green Meadow School was set up as a shelter. Center School in Longmeadow was set up until 8 p.m. as a warming center.
Wilbraham residents in need of shelter were invited to go to the Hampden Senior Center on Allen Street in Hampden. Residents were asked to bring sleeping bags, air mattresses and blankets.
In Westfield emergency shelters are open at Juniper Park School and Scanlon Hall, both located at Westfield State University.
Noble Hospital in Westfield was providing shelter services to the elderly and those with medical issues.
Sunderland opened its elementary school as an overnight warming center. Residents were told to bring their own betting. Pets were not allowed.
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst had no classes Monday, but had scheduled classes for Tuesday.
Hotel and motel rooms were getting increasingly hard to find as residents without power sought shelter.
Mary Kay Wydra, president of the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Springfield’s four major downtown hotels did not lose power and are currently full.
The Hotel Northampton regained power about 10 a.m. and had some rooms available. The Comfort Inn in Ludlow remains without power, Wydra said.
In Deerfield, power had been restored to the downtown village by Monday afternoon, and all three of the town’s traffic signals were functioning again.
“We’ve improved tremendously,” said Deerfield Police Chief Michael J. Wozniakewicz.
At 2 p.m., however, Stillwater, Upper and River roads were still closed because of downed trees that toppled onto wires.
The Deerfield Police and Fire departments’ Halloween hay rides were cancelled, and Wozniakewicz encouraged trick-or-treating to be omitted because many sidewalks had not been plowed because of downed wires and tree limbs.
State police at the Shelburne Falls barracks reported some areas in the communities they covered had received as much as 20 inches of snow and some power outages continued midday Monday.
“Springfield and Hampden County got hit worse than us,” said trooper Adam Leonczyk in Shelburne Falls. “We had more snowfall, but it wasn’t as heavy.”
Leonczyk said his barracks had recorded no “major problems” or life-threatening situations in the area they serve. “We’re hardy folks up here,” Leonczyk said.
A Connecticut Light & Power outage map Monday night was showing 81 to 100 percent outage for both Enfield and Somers. Enfield Square was closed with the exception of Target.
A Western Massachusetts Electric Co. outage map was showing Ludlow, Southwick, Agawam and Longmeadow being 81 to 100 percent without power. Springfield was shown as being 61 to 80 percent without power.
A spokesman at Peter Pan Bus Company said Monday night that all buses were departing on time as scheduled.
Amtrak service in New England remained disrupted. The line between Springfield and New Haven, Ct., remained suspended.
The Vermonter lines between New Haven and St. Albans, Vt., were cancelled.
The line between Albany, N.Y., and Boston also was cancelled.
Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service between Boston and Washington is operating normally.
Amtrak said passengers on cancelled trains can get refunds or rebook without penalty.
Operations were back to normal Monday at Bradley International Airport following weekend reports by passengers complaining about planes being forced to sit on the tarmac for as long as seven hours.
“Safety and security are always our number one concern,” said Bradley’s John Wallace, director of communications.
Downed trees and branches caused up to $5,000 in damage to some of the Bright Nights light displays installed along the three-mile route at Forest Park, Judith A. Matt, president of Spirit of Springfield, said.
She said a couple of pieces were destroyed, but the damage could have been much worse. Bright Nights is scheduled to open Nov. 23 and run through Jan. 1.
The YMCA of Greater Springfield announced that it will open its facility at 275 Chestnut Street for the community to use the shower facilities during the power outage. Residents are invited to bring their toiletries and towels and enjoy a hot shower.
