Western Massachusetts Electric Co. is reporting that 17,000 customers remain without power, while National Grid has 11,641 customers without power in Hampden County and 5,065 customers without power in Hampshire County.
Utility crews continue to work to restore power to cities and towns still dealing with widespread outages a week after a devastating nor’easter struck the region, and hope that the majority of customers will be back on the grid today.
As much as two feet of heavy, wet snow, combined with high winds uprooted and split entire trees or snapped thousands of huge limbs that in turn tore down power lines, poles and equipment, paralyzing the region.
Western Massachusetts Electric Co. is reporting that 17,000 customers remain without power, while National Grid has 11,641 customers without power in Hampden County and 5,065 customers without power in Hampshire County.
Sandra Ahearn, spokeswoman for Western Massachusetts Electric Co., said she expects most customers in the greater Springfield area to have power tonight, but said work will continue to stretch into Sunday.
“We’ll continue to pick up customers throughout the day. We have over 500 crews working,” Ahearn said.
National Grid spokesman David Graves said he also hopes more customers will have their power restored tonight, though most towns, with the exception of Granby and Northampton, are expected to get their power back late Sunday night. Granby and Northampton should have electricity by 12 a.m. Sunday.
Graves is advising customers who have power to leave an outdoor light on so crews can tell if a house has electricity. He said there are 3,800 people in the field – the overwhelming majority of them in Western Massachusetts - working on power restoration.
Here is a list of WMECO communities still without power and the number of customers affected:
Agawam:1,599
Amherst: 238
Chester: 1
Deerfield: 10
Easthampton: 224
Erving: 1
Granville: 8
Greenfield: 1
Hadley: 62
Hatfield: 21
Huntington: 15
Leverett: 51
Longmeadow: 1,257
Ludlow: 673
Montague: 14
Montgomery: 6
Northfield: 10
Pelham: 26
Russell: 75
Southampton: 283
Southwick: 473
Springfield: 9,682
Sunderland: 49
Tolland: 1
West Springfield: 2987
Westhampton: 6
Whately: 17
Here are the communities services by National Grid and the number of customers affected:
Hampden County
Brimfield:819
East Longmeadow: 2,171
Hampden: 1,197
Holland:611
Monson: 1,173
Palmer:2,187
Wales: 722
Wilbraham: 2,761
Hampshire County
Belchertown: 2,770
Ware: 2,209
Worcester County
Hardwick: 397
Warren: 681
West Brookfield: 388