Central Mass. Recovers From Sandy
With the worst of Hurricane Sandy over, crews were out this morning assessing damage throughout Central Massachusetts and trying to restore power to hundreds of thousands across the state, including about 10,000 National Grid customers in Worcester.
Damage assessment teams from the utility were scheduled to be throughout the city today to assess the extent of damages and plan repairs, according to a statement from City Manager Michael V. O’Brien.
O’Brien said Sandy left only minor damage in Worcester. There were only three services calls logged after midnight last night, after 172 such calls yesterday, he said.
Nearly 10,000 National Grid customers woke up to no power this morning, with the greatest impacts in the areas of West Tatnuck, Tatnuck, Webster Square and Quinsigamond Village-Upland Street.
The city “fared remarkably well,” O’Brien said.
Meanwhile, utilities have sheared the number of outages across the Bay State by about a quarter from its height of roughly 387,000 last Monday night to roughly 290,000 at 8 a.m. today, according to a comparison of updates from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. The number of outages fluctuated throughout the day, growing into the night before subsiding as utility companies restored power.
NStar reduced its outages by more than half during that nine-hour span, while National Grid, which had the most outages – at 236,000 – reduced that by about 15 percent.
The outages caused by what is now “super storm” Sandy are fewer than the number caused by either Tropical Storm Irene or the October snowstorm, which both occurred in 2011. During Irene, 1.2 million NStar and National Grid customers lost power, according to the attorney general’s office.
Also, state office buildings reopened at 10 a.m. today and the MBTA restored commuter rail service to its normal weekday schedules. In Worcester, the city’s public schools were closed for a second straight day today. Many other school systems either canceled classes for today or delayed openings.
(Material from State House News Service was used in this report.)
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