2:30 PM – Crews Make Major Strides in Restoration
MANCHESTER, N.H. (November 28, 2014) – More than half of the PSNH customers who lost power in the Thanksgiving snowstorm are now restored, thanks to the work of more than a thousand utility personnel from all over New England and beyond. Approximately 100,000 customers were reported without power as of mid-day Friday morning, down from a peak of about 207,000. That figure was expected to drop again significantly by the end of the day Friday, with global restoration—when the vast majority of customers will be restored—projected for Monday.
“We expect to make tremendous progress as we head into the weekend, with substantial completion of our restoration efforts by Monday,” said William Quinlan, President and COO of PSNH. “Thanks to the support of workers from our sister companies and other crews from throughout the region, we do believe that many communities will be fully restored over the weekend.” PSNH urges customers still without power to plan accordingly and thanks them for their patience.
The focus today is on restoring priority facilities (schools, medical facilities, economic centers, etc.) and large pockets of customers. Crews are also dedicated to identifying and repairing individual outages, often the longest part of the restoration process. There were isolated new outages Friday, largely caused by further damage to trees. Many of those have been resolved.
Hundreds of additional line workers began arriving Thursday to help restoration efforts, including crews from our sister Northeast Utilities companies in Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well as crews from Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Alabama, Michigan, Quebec and Ontario. In total, more than 800 PSNH and contractor line-workers, and more than 300 tree trimming specialists, are now working on this massive restoration effort and additional resources continue to arrive.
Safety Tips
- Customers should never touch a downed wire and should assume any downed line is live and dangerous. Be aware that downed wires could also be buried in the snow. Downed lines should be reported to PSNH immediately at 1–800–662–7764
- Customers using generators should make sure they are installed safely for their own safety, as well as that of line workers. A generator should only be set up outside and a safe distance from the house, wired directly to the house, and completely isolated from the utility supply. Otherwise, generator power could feed into the PSNH electrical system, causing unsafe conditions for line workers and neighbors. For more safety tips, visit psnh.com/stormsafety.