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 following Monday’s high winds.
As of 6:30 a.m., approximately 1,550 Unitil customers in New Hampshire are without power, down from a Monday morning peak of approximately 11,668 customers.
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.
“We understand this has been a very difficult time for our customers, especially with Christmas holiday only a week away,” 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 Monday’s high winds and we have a fresh compliment of crews blanketing the Seacoast this morning who will continue to work 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 Monday.
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.
The windy conditions have the potential to take wires to the ground. In the event of downed wires, assume all cables and wires that have fallen or dangling are energized and stay away. Be sure to avoid wet ground or puddles near a downed line because water conducts electricity. In addition, keep away from all flooded and debris laden areas because they may be hiding downed lines. Stay in a safe place and avoid driving in damaged areas so you don’t interfere with rescue and restoration efforts.
Unitil will be communicating throughout the event through Public Service Announcements (PSAs), our website, our customer call center and through the media. We also encourage customers to follow along with our storm updates via Facebook, our Twitter feed (@Unitil) and we will be providing real-time outage information online at unitil.com/map.
Customers experiencing outages should call 1-888-301-7700 or report online at unitil.com/report-outage.
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.
