Eversource officials Thursday said they expect a “multi-day” restoration for some Connecticut electric customers after a powerful Wednesday night storm knocked out power to thousands.
Eversource reported about 50,000 people were without power Thursday morning. The outages are a relatively small portion of the utilities’ 1.3 million customers, but major outages were reported across a wide part of the state – including in Middlesex, Hartford, Windham and Litchfield counties.
“It really swept through the middle of the state,” said Steve Sullivan, Eversource’s president of Connecticut electric operations. “North and south of Hartford, so … at least half of the state, from east to West, really got strongly hit.”
The utility said about 150 roads were blocked as a result of the storm and that it has identified about 1,200 trouble spots across the state.
“A trouble spot is where we’ve either already confirmed that there’s damage to the system or where, based on the call pattern, we strongly suspect that there’s damage to the system,” Sullivan said.
The utility is focusing its Thursday efforts on clearing blocked roads and restoring facilities, but those efforts will take time, Sullivan said.
“Based on what we can see — the amount of trouble spots, how they’re so spread out across the state — we are seeing this as a multi-day restoration,” he said.
