Most communities are nearly back to normal after a weekend ice and snowstorm snapped tree limbs that took power lines down.
Some 200,000 National Grid customers lost power thanks to Saturday's early spring storm, most of them in Rensselaer and Albany counties. Grid spokesperson Patrick Stella says the utility has more than 2,700 employees out in the field.
"Right now we have about 6,000 customers that that remain out of power mainly in the Albany and Rensselaer County areas," said Stella. "But we do anticipate getting most of those customers back tonight. You know, we may have some that go into tomorrow, but those would be individual customers that have some you know, extended waiting damage or things like that, that were a little bit beyond some of the other damage that we saw. So we're really hoping to get most of these customers back today."
Numerous outages in the Rensselaer County City of Troy kept crews busy round the clock.
Bethlehem Supervisor David VanLuven says it was the same in his Albany County town. “The storm hit us hard. We, as of about 8 o'clock on Sunday morning had 80% of the town without power. That's about 13,400 homes. National Grid made great progress through the day. And when we got up this morning, on Monday, the numbers were down to about 2,700 people without power. So that was encouraging,” Vanluven said, adding town departments worked overtime to provide public services during the storm.
“Our volunteer firefighters were out in force helping people. Our Highway Department was out plowing and salting and moving and cutting fallen trees and branches across roadways. Our public works guys were keeping the sewers working, even though a bunch of our pump stations were without power. Our building inspectors were meeting with homeowners who had branches and trees fall on their houses. Senior Services was in to call our most vulnerable residents to make sure they were okay. Our police department and dispatchers fielded, I think about almost 300 calls for assistance just on Saturday night,” said VanLuven.
Troy Mayor Carmella Mantello issued an update Monday afternoon regarding the clean-up. She says a warming center remains open at the Italian Community Center and most roads should be reopened before midnight.
"Spring Avenue is still closed because we were working on the landslide, remediating that, putting in drainage. But I hope to open Spring Avenue by the end of the week. So hopefully tonight we'll have everybody back up and running and nobody without power," Mantello said.
Mantello asks residents to move any trees and branches to the side of the road tonight if possible.
Again, Stella: "We know that outages for this duration are not easy for people, especially when the weather's a little colder. It was a it was a pretty bad storm. And we just appreciate we appreciate the patience of the customers while we were doing the restoration work."
