One-third of Vermonters woke up today without electricity, according to Vermont’s largest utility. It may be the end of the week before power is restored to the 45,000 homes and businesses across the state that have lost power.
The overnight windstorm barreling through the Northeast brought down trees and branches that in turn damaged power lines. Utility crews are out across the region repairing the lines. Green Mountain Power is Vermont’s largest utility. Spokesperson Kristin Carlson says nearly a third of all utility customers in the state were without power Monday morning. She notes that the windstorm is hitting all of New England with gusts up to 80 mph. “Other New England states, Connecticut, they’re also dealing with the same windstorm. We had gusts almost up to 80 mph and so right now we have teams out working to make repairs, assessing the damage. But this storm did cause a significant amount of damage to the whole Northeast.”
Carlson says damage occurred statewide in Vermont. “We are seeing outages in every district that we serve. And what is very unusual about this storm that hit hard Sunday night overnight into Monday morning is that folks who have worked at GMP for decades say they have never seen this many people without power at one time. So this is a very significant storm that caused a lot of damage. We were tracking this storm. We had our crews ready and we have brought in extra crews to help restore power. But even with all of that help and more help arriving today it could take days, possibly through the end of the week, to restore power to everyone.”
Burlington Electric services Vermont’s largest city. Spokesman Mike Kanarick says there were some overnight power losses. “Power went out beginning at around two o’clock in the morning to as many as about 1,000 customers in the Burlington area. We’re fortunate in Burlington that a good bit of our wiring is underground. But we do have wires and poles in the air. We have had a few trees down including one on Conger Avenue that did land on top of a car. Fortunately no one was hurt. But we’ve been able to restore power to all of our customers.”
Kanarick adds that with the city’s power restored at about 9:30, their crews are being sent out to help other utilities. “We know that our friends around Vermont and in New England and all over were hit hard and as soon as we get the work done in Burlington that we need to we’ll be sending all available crews that we have, all of our line worker crews, throughout Vermont and beyond if needed to help our brothers and sisters get the power back. A crew is two line workers and a bucket truck. In Burlington we have, depending on what’s happening at the time, about four or five crews.”
Carlson notes that the storm is not over and GMP is preparing for additional outages. “This afternoon there will be another round of this storm that going to blow through Vermont and New England. We are expecting there will be some additional outages that stem from this storm. We already have crews that we had lined up. We have all of our crews out working. We had also lined external crews who are already on the ground here helping us. And we also have additional crews coming in for support from Canada and they should be here this afternoon. And so we’ll probably have in total over 500 folks out working.”
Both utilities emphasize safety and say to keep at least 50 feet away from any downed power lines.
