Governor, Utilities Assess Current Restoration Situation

In a tense, at times combative press conference Tuesday evening, Gov. Dannel Malloy and utility representatives discussed efforts to restore the hundreds of thousands of residents who lost power in Saturday's storm.

United Illuminating Spokesman Bill Reis said his company had restored approximately 50,000 customers as of Tuesday and that it planned to restore the utility’s remaining 1,800 customers still without power by midnight Tuesday.

By midnight on Wednesday only 20 residences in North Haven remained without power.

“We will work throughout the night to restore all known customer outages,” Reis said. Anyone who is still without power is asked to report their outage by calling 800-722-5584.

Reis said once all were restored, UI it would then turn over its available crews to CL&P to aid in their restoration efforts.

Even Malloy conceded that he was frustrated by the utilities restoration efforts and that they were “not nearly fast enough,” but said that the primary emphasis currently was on restoring power, and that after all Connecticut residents had their power restored would be the time for his administration and lawmakers to “analysis” the utilities performance.

“Anybody who is without power, you can’t get power back soon enough,” Malloy said. “And since I’m the governor, I can’t get the utilities to get their power on soon enough. It is a frustrating experience, particularly when you understand that people are dealing with cold situations.”

The current state of emergency and widespread power outages come just two months after more than 800,000 state residents lost power during Tropical Storm Irene. It took more than a week for power to be restored to the entire state after that storm, and the legislature then held a series of hearings into the utilities response.

Reis was joined at the press conference at the State Armory in Hartford Tuesday evening by CL&P president Jeff Butler, who said that CL&P’s primary focus since Saturday’s freak October snowstorm was on “public health and safety issues,” such as clearing live or downed wires from roadways, but that the utility had made “substantial progress in those areas” and that it was adding more contracted work crews daily and now planned to focus the majority of its efforts on restoration work.

“With the additional crews that we’re adding and have arrived today, with more arriving tomorrow, we’re shifting our area of focus on restoration,” Butler said. “…We expect to see a significant increase in restoration rates as we shift.”

Butler said that CL&P had restored more than 275,000 customers as of Tuesday, but that approximately 650,000 still remained in the dark. He said that CL&P currently had 493 line crews – 172 from CL&P, the additional 321 outside contractors – and 393 tree crews working throughout the state, and would ramp up to 627 line crews by Wednesday, 777 by Thursday, and 837 by Friday, with an outstanding request for 300-plus additional crews from wherever the utility could find them.

When asked, Butler stood by the company’s assertion that it would have 99 percent of powerless customers restored by Sunday.

“We’re still shooting to have 99 percent of our customers restored sometime Sunday,” Butler said. “…That’s what we’re pushing for, and I’ll bring whatever crews necessary as they are available to meet that target.”

When asked if CL&P’s current contingent of 172 line restoration crews was sufficient to cover the CL&P’s more than 1.23 million electrical customers, Butler noted that Connecticut has one of the highest electrical rates in the nation and that the utility “continually looks at its staffing.”