Crews worked diligently over night and made significant progress restoring power to customers affected by the October snow storm. All customers in the Capital region of New Hampshire have power restored and as a result Unitil closed its regional emergency operations center in Concord as of 2:00AM. The company expects to have a global estimated restoration time for all remaining customers by 9:00AM this morning.
As of 4:30AM an estimated 31,861 of Unitil’s 103,000 electric customers system wide are reporting no power, down from a peak of 70,000. Of those customers, 15,179 of Unitil’s 28,000 customers in Massachusetts are without power and 16,682 of Unitil’s 75,000 customers in seacoast of New Hampshire are without power.
“We are finalizing our damage assessment this morning and expect to have a global estimated time of restoration in the next few hours,” Unitil Media Relations Manager Alec O’Meara said. “We had crews working through the night and were able to restore power to all customers in the Capital region. Crews from the Capital area will be reassigned and join with fresh crews coming on the system this morning to make a major restoration push today.”
Approximately 300 crews, some from as far away as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Canada, will be working to restore power to the areas hit hardest by the storm, such as north central Massachusetts and the New Hampshire seacoast. The crews provide specialized work and include line, tree, digger, damage assessment and wires down teams.
Customers experiencing outages should call the following toll-free numbers:
- For the NH Seacoast Area: 1-800-582-7276
- For the NH Capital Area: 1-800-852-3339
- For Massachusetts: 1-888-301-7700
Important Safety Reminders
Emergency generators can be a helpful tool by providing electricity during a power outage. However, improperly installed generators can energize lines outside your home believed to be inactive by technicians, resulting in serious injury or even death. The back-up generator should be installed to receive power from either your utility or the generator, but never both at the same time.
It is important to ensure that generators are located outside and have appropriate venting because generators exhaust carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a deadly, silent odorless gas. Install a carbon monoxide detector in your home and be alert to the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, which are sudden nausea, cherry red lips or headaches. If you suspect carbon monoxide poisoning, leave the area to get fresh air. For more generator safety tips, visit www.unitil.com.
