Unitil Corporation, (Unitil.com), a provider of electricity and natural gas to customers in New England, is making progress with power restoration efforts as a strong early spring nor’easter begins to wind down.
As of 6 p.m., 10,650 customers in New Hampshire remained without power with 145 in Massachusetts. That’s down from a peak of 21,888 who lost power around 8 a.m. as the storm ramped up with hazardous wind gusts and heavy, wet snow clinging to trees during the early morning hours. As many as 31,000 customers have been impacted since the start of the storm.
“It appears the worst of this storm is over, and with the strongest of the winds now subsiding and working conditions improving, our crews will be able to get a better handle on the full extent of the damage and the repairs that will be needed,” Unitil External Affairs Director Alec O’Meara said. “Our crews have spent much of today working with local first responders to address public safety issues, including removing downed trees and powerlines and clearing blocked roads. We expect this to be a multi-day restoration effort, which we understand can be challenging for our customers, but our crews will be working around the clock to bring the rest of those impacted back online as soon as possible.”
While crews restore power where possible and work with first responders throughout a long-duration storm to address blocked roads and other obstacles, Unitil must wait until the hazardous conditions ease before assessors can begin estimating how long it will take to restore all customers. With numerous broken poles and multiple trees and wires down in parts of the region, damage assessors will need to canvass impacted areas to get a comprehensive look at the damage to the system. The assessing process can take time, but once it’s completed Unitil will be able to calculate estimated times of restoration (ETRs). A town-by-town breakdown of outages with assessing status and updated ETRs can then be added to the Unitil Outage Map, which can be found at unitil.com/map.
Unitil’s system and regional Emergency Operations Centers remain open to assist with the storm response.
Customers are reminded that in the event of downed wires, they should 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 is 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.
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 or report online at unitil.com/report-outage.
