Nor'easter in Scituate could leave people without power for days, town manager says

This weekend's nor'easter is arriving off the coast of Scituate and town officials are preparing for possible power outages that could last several days.

"We're starting to see the storm that was forecast with those really high winds," Scituate Town Manager Jim Boudreau told WBZ-TV. "It's going to get a little worse before it gets better." 

"The closer you are to the coast, that's going to bring down some limbs, some power is going to go out," he added. 

Boudreau said that the length of the storm could prevent power grid restoration efforts from beginning until Monday, leaving residents who experience outages without power for days. 

"If you lose power, you probably won't see a truck until Monday because it's just too dangerous for those guys to come up in the trucks," he said. 

Coastal Massachusetts communities are the most likely to experience storm-related power outages this weekend. As of Saturday at 2:45 p.m., roughly 6,000 customers are without power across the state, according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) outage map.

Scituate officials will be monitoring the outages throughout the weekend. If outages are widespread, Boudreau said the town plans to open a building on Sunday to allow residents to charge their devices before the town buildings open on Monday. 

Boudreau is urging residents to avoid going outside unless necessary. The town has more first responders working this weekend and have deployed their high-water safety vehicles as a precaution. 

The storm is also testing new seawalls installed in Scituate in recent weeks, including some that are still under construction.

 "This is the first time [the new seawall] has really gotten hit, so far so good," Boudreau said.