A week after storm, 230K still without power

HARTFORD, Conn. - One week after an unusual October snowstorm slammed the Northeast and knocked out power to more than 3 million customers in several state, more than 215,000 customers in Connecticut are still without electricity and heat.

Nearly 15,000 customers are still without power in New Jersey.

Angry residents left without heat as temperatures drop to near freezing overnight have been lashing out at Connecticut Light & Power: accosting repair crews, making profane criticisms online, and suing.

In Simsbury, a hard-hit suburban town of about 25,000 residents, National Guard troops deployed to clear debris have been providing security outside a utility office building.

At a shelter at Simsbury High School, resident Stacy Niezabitowski, 53, said Friday she would love to yell at someone from CL&P but hadn't seen any of its workers.

"Everybody is looking for someplace to vent — not a scapegoat, just someplace to vent your anger so somebody will listen and do something," said Niezabitowski, who was having lunch at the shelter with her 21-year-old daughter. "Nobody is doing anything."

According to Connecticut Light & Power's website, there are more than 1,800 crews working to restore power to those hundreds of thousands of customers still in the dark.

The October nor'easter knocked out power to more than 3 million homes and businesses across the Northeast, including 830,000 in Connecticut, where outages now exceed those of all other states combined. CL&P called the snowstorm and resulting power outages "an historic event" and said it was focused on getting almost all power back on by Sunday night.

The company has blamed the extent of the devastation partly on overgrown trees in the state, where it says some homeowners and municipalities have resisted the pruning of limbs for reasons including aesthetics.

For some residents still dealing with outages, no excuse is acceptable.

In Avon, a Farmington Valley town where 85 percent of customers were still without power on Friday, town manager Brandon Robertson said he faulted CL&P for an "absolutely unacceptable and completely avoidable" situation. He said the high school that is being used as an emergency shelter was still running on a generator. Although public works crews had cleared most of the town roads, he said, more than 25 still were blocked as they waited for CL&P crews to clear power lines.

"Our residents are angry. We're angry," he said. "It's just really shocking."

Gov. Dan Malloy said he has contracted with an outside firm to conduct an investigation into why CL&P and United Illuminating have taken so long to turn the lights back on.

CBS Station WCBS reports that in Danbury, public works crews put up signs Wednesday complaining about CL&P's slow response. Without the utility company's clearance, they were powerless to clear trees and downed wires.

The phone company is resorting to generating its own power.

Other state officials, including the Attorney General, have also called for an investigation into CL&P's progress, putting the utility on the defensive.

The person who has taken the brunt of the public scorn is CL&P's president and chief operating officer, Jeffrey D. Butler. He has been appearing with Gov. Malloy at daily news briefings, but he was left to face a grilling by the media on his own Thursday night when the governor left the room after criticizing the slow pace of power restoration.

Butler said he was sorry so many residents have been left without power for so long during the chilly nights. He said Friday that his own house in the Farmington Valley has been without power since a generator failed, and he urged customers to remember the extent of the damage.

"People need to keep in perspective the magnitude of damage," he said.

CL&P is holding firm on its promise to have 99 percent of the state restored by Sunday at midnight.

"It's really frustrating, when you're told one day - and now we're told next Wednesday - for a full restoration, when we were told tomorrow at midnight," said Newtown resident Lynn Kovak.

The outages have driven thousands of people into shelters in New England and have led to several deaths, including eight in Connecticut.

In North Brookfield, Mass., an 86-year-old woman was found dead Thursday in her unheated home, and her 59-year-old son was taken to a hospital with symptoms of hypothermia, subnormal body temperature. The local fire chief said it was unfortunate they had not reached out to authorities or neighbors for help.

In New Jersey, authorities said fumes from a gasoline-powered generator are believed to have caused the deaths of an elderly couple discovered hours before electricity was restored to their home in rural Milford, near Pennsylvania, on Thursday evening.

On Saturday PSE&G reported about 1,700 outages in N.J., the majority of those in Essex, Bergen and Passaic counties.

JCP&L is reporting about 13,000 New Jersey customers still in the dark. They hope to have power restored to most of those customers by midnight Saturday, but said it may be later this weekend for those in Morris, Sussex and Warren counties.

For many without power, the past week has been a blur of moving between friends' homes or hotel rooms with occasional visits to their own houses to feed pets and check, in vain, for electricity.

Glastonbury resident Alison Takahashi, 17, said she has bunked with friends and, for a few nights, with her parents in a hotel 45 minutes away, the only opening they could find after the storm. She said her brother, a high school freshman, also has moved like a nomad between friends' homes all week, heading to the next when he worried he'd started wearing out his welcome.

"The cellphones are our life lines right now," said Takahashi, a Glastonbury High School senior. "It's the only way to know where everybody is, and if you forget your charger and your phone is dead, you can't reach anybody."

Some Connecticut residents have vented their frustration through dark humor on the Internet, turning to social media websites to ridicule the utility — often with profanity. One person tweeted: "Really #CL&P? A hamster on a wheel would be a better power source."

Some business owners already were planning to pursue compensation from CL&P for their losses.

In Canton, Asylum Hair Salon owner Scott Simmons filed a negligence lawsuit against the utility to make up for $1,000 in lost business from Saturday to Wednesday. He said other businesses owners who still don't have power are taking a much bigger hit.

"I just think it was completely mishandled," Simmons said of CL&P's response to the outages.

A few particularly irate power customers have taken their anger out on utility crews.

CL&P spokeswoman Janine Saunders said some hostile customers have approached the crews, but she declined to provide details. A police officer posted outside the utility's office building in Simsbury along with a National Guard soldier said line crews had been threatened and they wanted to make sure people could complain without letting things get out of hand.

The utility urged the public via Twitter not to harass or threaten the line workers.

Saunders said the utility understands what people are going through and has stressed to customer service employees that they need to be empathetic.

"If people want to vent, call us, see us on Facebook," she said. "We're doing our best to try to respond to people and answer questions in those medium. But let the folks out in the field do their job."

In Massachusetts, where tens of thousands of customers were still without power, the National Grid said in a statement that there have been "only a couple isolated incidents" and that most customers have been thanking crews for their work: "They are demonstrating their appreciation by bringing crews coffee and food."