Unitil Corporation, (Unitil.com), a provider of electricity and gas to customers in New England, expects to have the customers who lost power following a significant winter storm Saturday to have power restored by Tuesday morning. Restoration to some single service issues and isolated pockets of customers may extend later into the day.
As of 5 p.m. approximately 4,700 Unitil customers were without power, down from a peak of 7,000. The vast majority of impacted Unitil customers still without power reside in and around Concord, NH, where the rain/snow line for Saturday’s storm lingered for the majority of the day. As a result, significant amounts of wet, heavy snow and freezing rain accumulated in the area, pulling trees and tree limbs into poles and wires. Outages began to occur around 7 p.m. Saturday and escalated through the overnight hours.
Unitil and third-party crews worked overnight with first responders to address wires down issues, restoring power where conditions allowed. These crews will continue to work and will be joined by fresh crews from Vermont Monday morning to continue restoring power in what has proven to be a heavily damaged area in and around Concord.
“The communities of Bow, Concord, Chichester, Canterbury and Epsom appear to have seen the most hazardous conditions in our service region for this event, and the majority of remaining outages on our system are concentrated in this area,” Unitil External Affairs Director Alec O’Meara said. “At each location, crews are finding multiple issues requiring repairs, significant amounts of wires down issues and broken poles, all of which are slowing repairs. Crews will continue to canvas the region and work until everyone is restored.”
Unitil’s outage map at Unitil.com/map is being updated regularly with estimated restoration times for specific outages throughout the region as crews work through the area. Should new outages occur, the map will update in real time with estimated restoration times for these issues as well as they become available.
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.
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.
