With over half of the state still in the dark, CL&P President Jeffrey Butler announced Tuesday residents will soon be able to check the status on when power in their area will be restored.
“By tomorrow morning we intend to have all 149 towns in our service territory with projections of when 99 percent of their power will be restored,” Butler told the press during a morning briefing with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and United Illuminating President William Reis.
CL&P has placed this list of restoration estimates on its Web site on when they will be 99 percent restored. Suffield, along with many surrounding towns, should have 99 percent of its power restored by Sunday at 11:59 p.m., according to the utility.
CL&P has already restored more than 400,000 customers, according to a press release from the utility Wednesday morning, leaving more than 550,000 customers still in the dark in multiple towns throughout the state. Butler said CL&P made “good progress" with restoration on Monday, and it has 770 crews actively working on the ground to remove downed lines and trees and get towns back on the grid.
Main arteries, such as commercial districts in towns, are mostly restored, allowing for residents to buy groceries, visit the pharmacy and, as Malloy noted, most importately "get gas."
“I recognize that doesn’t mean anything to anyone who has been out of power for an extended period of time,” Butler said.
Butler later added that he understood the public’s frustration with the fact that power hasn’t been restored yet. Some communities in the state are still facing significant outages, including Suffield, with 93 percent out on Wednesday morning, Enfield, with 76 percent out, and Windsor Locks, with 98 percent out.
But Butler added that he was also “extremely frustrated” with the situation.
“To go through two record events in two months, it’s something I haven’t dealt with in my career,” Butler said. “We’re here to serve customers and to have large number of customers out for an extended period of time is something that has frustrated us as well."
Suffield Patch Editor Perry Robbin contributed to this story.
