Power crews restoring electricity in rural region
By James M. Odato
Hundreds of Adirondack Park power customers and some travelers were inconvenienced for the second month in a row as heavy rains and winds bruised and flooded parts of a region still digging out from July tornadoes and downpours.
National Grid officials said they could not predict when power will return for those affected since Friday around rush hour from the remnants of one-time Hurricane Debby.
On Saturday, town and county officials said some electricity arrived and the power company seemed to provide conservative estimates of many hours before utilities are back townwide or countywide.
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“We don’t really have restoration times,” said Patrick Stella of National Grid. “There are a lot of broken poles, damage everywhere.”
Warren County, still with 5,300 customers dark on Saturday, Hamilton, with 1,499 out of electricity, and Herkimer County, with 1,646 customers without power, experienced the greatest outages. Hundreds more lost lights in Essex, Fulton, Saratoga, St. Lawrence and Washington counties.
“A bunch more just came on line,” said Keene Supervisor Joe Pete Wilson. “They’re making progress.” He said the town suffered from the high winds. Just one road was closed because heavy river flow ate up the abutments below the bridge at the Glen between Keene and Upper Jay, causing closure of Styles Brook Road.
He said he and others in the town have started discussions about an “integrated plan” on how to deal with recurring storms.
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Several towns in Essex County lost power.
“This is getting old,” said Lewis Supervisor James Monty. “We’re surviving. We’re resilient.”
He said some of the roads that were damaged in the July storm were cut into again from storm water, but roads remained passable.
Other areas struck hard by the July storm in Warren County, such as Horicon, Bolton and Chester, were revisited by winds, this time by Debby’s force on August 9.
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Warren County spokesman Don Lehman said county officials have begun talks with the power company on how to set up better storm defenses.
“It could have been worse,” said Westport Supervisor Michael “Ike” Tyler. “We’re sitting here with an $800,000 highway budget and we’re dealing with $3 million in damages,” said Tyler. Roads are still closed from the July storm and the August storm took some of the patches from other areas.
“We don’t really have restoration times,” said Patrick Stella of National Grid. “There are a lot of broken poles, damage everywhere.”
I’m glad this guy wasn’t running the Manhattan Project.
Too bad that National Grid isn’t even an American-owned company anymore.