A storm that brought snow, sleet and freezing rain to eastern New York over the weekend took trees and power lines down with it.
Spring technically started Tuesday, but a fierce ice and snowstorm began in the wee hours of Saturday.
By Saturday afternoon Troy Mayor Carmella Mantello issued an "Emergency Action" in response to widespread reports of downed trees, wires down, power outages, and hazardous road conditions spanning several neighborhoods.
"Saturday, I was out and about with crews for the snow. And that was early Saturday afternoon lo and behold, everything changed so quickly, turned to freezing ice, freezing rain, and it came down fast and furious," said Mantello. "Saturday night I was out all night with the crews till about 12,12:30. And literally, it went from a little bit of snow to freezing rain to sleet. And we had trees coming down all over the city of Troy. With that, our folks were clearing trees. They were clearing the roadways, but the trees were just coming down from one block to the next. Literally by midnight, I heard over the scanner. 'Hey, I need barricades over at Pinewoods and Pawling.' 'We're out of barricades,' the guy said."
National Grid’s Patrick Stella says crews working around the clock have restored service to the majority of customers.
"We had crews that were pre-positioned on Friday, expecting the weather, but the weather that we saw was a little bit more severe than we had originally planned. But we did have crews that were in place for it. We saw a little bit more ice and a little bit more snow than we were anticipating, and that caused a lot of tree damage, damage to our lines. So we had extensive damage in the immediate Troy, Schenectady, and Albany regions. There were about 200,000 customers that were affected by the storm. Today, on Monday morning, we've restored power to a large majority of them. We have about 10,000 customers that are that are still out in some of these harder to reach areas. A lot of that being in Albany County and Rensselaer County. We do have more than 2,700 employees that are dedicated to the restoration efforts. We plan, or hope that most of these customers will be back today by late tonight," Stella said.
Mantello says the utility worked through the night to get the lights back on in Troy. "So we went from over 7,000 without power to today a little over 1,000. Yesterday we had three warming centers. We have red cross over here with a cantina serving coffee. We had a CDTA bus through Carm and the CDTA team so it was it was awesome. And we have private contractors in here. And literally we just saturated, you know, the East Side, South Troy and Sycaway were really was hit hard. And here we are today. We have multiple roads closed on Saturday night yesterday morning. And today we're down to two roads. So we're on an upswing. I have a warming center open for the thousand households who don't have power right now. It's over at the ICC," Mantello said.
That's the Italian Community Center on 5th Avenue where National Grid is distributing bottled water through 3 p.m.
Erica Jackson in Rensselaer Mayor Mike Stammel's office says things are almost back to normal.
"The North End Fire Station has been closed this morning due to everybody having power again and everything is back to normal. The Red Cross is coming to pick up the cots and everybody's back home and safe," said Jackson.
Albany County Department of Public Works Commissioner Lisa Ramundo says much progress has been made after a state of emergency ended.
"All Albany County roads are currently open. Three were closed over the weekend due to trees down and National Grid needing to get some work done. But now all county roads are open and our road crews are continuing to do some tree maintenance along the highways," Ramundo said.
Stella says a small number of National Grid customers may not see their service restored until very late Monday or Tuesday morning.
