Unitil Corporation, (Unitil.com), a provider of natural gas and electricity to customers in New England, continued to make progress overnight as crews work to restore power to most by Christmas night following Friday’s high winds that impacted as many as 42,000 customers over the duration of the event.
As of 6:45 a.m., approximately 1,200 Unitil customers in New Hampshire are without power, down from a Friday evening peak of approximately 22,000.
While the majority of those impacted are expected to have power restored by this evening, restoration may take longer for customers in isolated pockets that experienced extensive damage and those with individual service issues.
“It’s Christmas morning and many of our customers are still waking up to no power. We understand this has been a very difficult time for our customers, especially on Christmas and with frigid temperatures in the wake of the storm,” Unitil Media Relations Manager Alec O’Meara said. “Our crews have worked around the clock restoring power to tens of thousands of customers who lost power during Friday’s high winds. They’ll continue to work tirelessly throughout the event until all outages are restored. We appreciate the tireless work of our crews, municipal officials and the patience of our customers during this restoration process.”
Unitil expects to close its system and regional emergency operation centers tonight and resume normal operations in New Hampshire as crews transition to restoring power to those remaining customers. Normal operations in Massachusetts resumed midday Saturday.
Customers who remain without power after their neighbors have been restored are urged to call Unitil customer service and report the outage again. Some of these customers may have service issues specific to their home and will require work by a private electrician before restoration can be completed. Once the work is complete, customers should call customer service to have restoration completed.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR MEDIA: Unitil asks that when reporting outage information, outlets time stamp the information. Outage numbers change hourly and we wish to make sure the information customers receive is consistent and understandable. Re-Tweets and re-posting of old information without referencing a time can create confusion.
Customers experiencing outages should call 1-888-301-7700.
You can also report outages online at unitil.com/report-outage.
