Irene Damage Thread............Oh Yeah!

[Amped]

Yeah the vt stuff is awful. The final number of condemned homes in ct will be in the hundreds though.

It's a shame houses have to be condemed from mold and dirty water.

[powderfreak]

That's good that it wasn't that bad... I was thinking we may not have a place to stay in late October when we go up hiking again.

I have taken that bike path that heads into the village and crosses the creek over some really nice bridges. Hopefully that is all intact.

Yeah there was some minor washouts of the pavement on the Rec Path but all-in-all it escaped fine. A few small sections (like 5-10 feet) were claimed by the river but the town should take care of that quickly. When you visit you will see the aftermath though as there are now trees just sitting in the middle of the stream/river and the banks are very eroded. That stuff isn't going away anytime soon.

As far as housing flooding, I think most spots were ok. One of the NNE posters that also lives in Stowe was evacuated and had their foundation damaged by flash flooding. The photo below shows more of what I saw in this residential area... but you do start to get concerned when there is moving water flowing through an area that isn't really near a creekbed or stream. The rain was falling so quickly that it was just pouring out of the forested hillsides and following the lowest elevation though the residential areas. You did start to wonder by Sunday afternoon just how high these little neighborhood flowing puddles would get.

[Baroclinic Zone]

The media has discovered VT and all the national news shows etc. are there, but it is every bit as bad in ENY along several river basins. The entire Schoharie Valley is destroyed basically. I'm gonna venture down there (8 miles west of me) and get a look as the devastation tomorrow. Also Windham, NY (where the ski resort is) was swept away by the Batavia Kill. Water level at 5 feet inside the first floors of houses.

NY Thruway (90) still closed west bound from this exit (25A) to Herkimer and east bound from Syracuse to here. All of the west bound traffic is passing through Duanesburg here on US-20.

My bossed daughter had a b**ch of a time getting back to Utica. It took her 11 hours to get from Franklin, MA to Utica. The highway was closed everywhere and once you got to a point where the highway was closed, you couldn't just turn around because they closed the road behind you. A nightmare to say the least.

Nothing new to report here. Schools are open tomorrow. My sister was still without power in Wrentham as well as my parents in Foxboro last I heard a few hours ago.

One thing I am noticing as I drive is that there are some trees and limbs in precarious positions that I hope people have noticed ad reported . I saw a pine just down the street that was shattered about 8 feet up but still miraculously standing. Stuff like that could come down in any windy day we see and cause more problems.

[H2Otown_WX]

We had 2 things going for us

1) Lieutenant Gov Nancy Wyman lives in my neighborhood

2) We are the 31st best small town to live in in the country and # 1 in CT

John Rowland's brother lives in mine..not sure if that helped at all though but we did get it back in < 24 hrs.

[HIPPYVALLEY]

It's a shame houses have to be condemed from mold and dirty water.

I mentioned earlier that the Greenfield waste water facility was damaged and sending raw sewage into the Ct River which basically means that any crops downstream that were flooded should be considered hazardous waste. Hadn't thought about all that nasty water getting into yards and houses on sunday and monday. Yuck.

[Clinch Leatherwood]

I mentioned earlier that the Greenfield waste water facility was damaged and sending raw sewage into the Ct River which basically means that any crops downstream that were flooded should be considered hazardous waste. Hadn't thought about all that nasty water getting into yards and houses on sunday and monday. Yuck.

That's a real shi*ty situation.

Power repairs are really going slow. I took a 15 mile bike ride tonight...tons of isolated 2-5 home outaqes with gensets roaring. Easton still hosed, Wareham, parts of Barnstable etc. There just aren't enough crews and I think this storm points out an inherent weakness in the new utility model. 90% of the time they can call on neighboring crews to mutual assist. With a massive system like this one that doesnt work.

[Ginx snewx]

Yeah I agree...and wasn't just talking to you...it just seems people are never satisfied. Then again I never lost power one second, so maybe I'm not one to talk. The biggest effect this storm had on me is we can't run on our cross country course until next week because its too wet.

Dude you have no clue, the only people clearing roads here are town folk, towns laid off, state layoffs, CLP layoffs, minor skeleton crews left. Profits however are way up. Easy to go from 750000 to 500000 when that 250000 are circuit resets, let's see how they do now. They promise next Mon, hope so.

[CoastalWx]

Got back to my condo, luckily nothing here but some branches down. Parents my stay at my place as they still have no power down there.

Thoughts go out to those down on the CT shore and VT.

[MegaMike]

For anyone interested, here's the power restoration estimates for National Grid in Massachusetts... and here for NStar in Rhode Island. In case the links don't work I'll post the urls.

http://www1.whdh.com/pdf/NationalGridRestorationTimes.pdf

http://www1.whdh.com/pdf/NSTARRestorationTimes.pdf

[adamrivers]

Meanwhile WCTY makes jokes about it.

They are our sister station and do a great job......but are clearly taking it a little less seriously than we are....it's not a joke, some people have lost a lot and are really struggling - a lot of people in our neck of the woods live paycheck to paycheck, and not going to work is killing them right now.

I feel bad for you, man....seeing what some of these families, including yours, are going through because of this - and getting no answers from their towns, the state, CL&P, anyone.....had a woman call tonight from Franklin who has 2 trees blocking her road. Town has given her no answers, she still hasn't talked to a live person at CL&P, called her state rep who said "we'll get to you soon"....very frustrated people out there. She said she didn't care so much that she didn't have power, but that nobody was responding to her phone calls, nobody was taking any action. Hasn't left her house or had power since Sunday and can't get out except via vehicle....and since there's nothing in Franklin it's difficult to walk anywhere. A lot of folks feel like third class citizens right now.

The entire disaster response has been just that - a disaster - at least in Eastern Connecticut - imagine if this was a hurricane?

Windham is the place to be these past few days - we have power - as a matter of fact, the main line in town (Hospital/ECSU/Main Street/radio station/radio towers) never lost hard power - not sure how as everywhere around it did....but the stores can not keep food on the shelves, gas at the gas stations, etc....since it's the closest town for a lot of people right now that has gas and food of any kind. Saw a gas truck at Cumby's on Main Street making a delivery tonight, so hopefully that will get folks through tomorrow. Valero, Stop and Shop were both out when I drove by on the way into work.

I hope things get better for you guys, Steve. Let me know if I can help.

[adamrivers]

Tolland cancels first day of school tomorrow. Picking right up from last winter

Many districts are not going back until the 6th now - losing an entire week

[weatherMA]

Dude you have no clue, the only people clearing roads here are town folk, towns laid off, state layoffs, CLP layoffs, minor skeleton crews left. Profits however are way up. Easy to go from 750000 to 500000 when that 250000 are circuit resets, let's see how they do now. They promise next Mon, hope so.

Good luck. Amazing the differences over short distances.

[ORH_wxman]

Someone like Ryan could publicize this.

He really should. I'm not sure it would get him any friends with some powerful people though, lol. But its quite apparent they are far less competent than neighboring states at dealing with any type of weather related disasters or something less than a disaster...like a strong Nor' Easter snowstorm. I was pretty stunned to see how many problems they had compared to MA and RI this winter with the snow...but I sort of chalked that up to maybe them getting too complacent (CT really hadn't had a huge winter in a while, since '95-'96...they kind of semi-dodged a bullet in '04-'05 and even '02-'03)...but then when I saw this stuff, I am convinced they have a real problem with their emergency management infrastructure. They got hit a bit harder than MA and RI, but the discrepancies are too much to ignore, especially when you compare neighboring border towns.

[snowman21]

Hmmm in Bob we didn't have power for two weeks, and Feb 2010 in NH it took 8 days to restore power here (a less impactful storm). I don't think after three days is time to get outraged, at all, esp with the amount of damage.

They've got 900+ crews now working in the state. Again, not sure what else people expect as this is really a matter of time and labor. There's only so fast you can clean up big trees that wiped out poles, lines, and transformers, and replace all that infrastructure. The issues are generally in the small towns in the eastern part of the state. These small towns don't have many people/power customers, and themselves have pretty small public works crews that normally would go out and at least clean up the trees and get the roads re-opened - that's not a CL&P issue (they're not a tree company after all), it's a local issue. Also, it can't be that surprising that they'd start in more urban areas where they can get the most bang for the buck where they can quickly restore the greatest number of customers. Plus the urban areas provide most of the tax base in the state, so I'm sure the state government (which is already broke) is looking at it as would I rather a small town like Scotland go without power or somewhere like Hartford? I think they need to start scaling back the resources in the northwestern part of the state which now has few outages and get them immediately to the eastern part of the state where it appears they've done nothing which is pretty ridiculous going on day #4 even for middle of nowhere towns.

[Mr Torchey]

He really should. I'm not sure it would get him any friends with some powerful people though, lol. But its quite apparent they are far less competent than neighboring states at dealing with any type of weather related disasters or something less than a disaster...like a strong Nor' Easter snowstorm. I was pretty stunned to see how many problems they had compared to MA and RI this winter with the snow...but I sort of chalked that up to maybe them getting too complacent (CT really hadn't had a huge winter in a while, since '95-'96...they kind of semi-dodged a bullet in '04-'05 and even '02-'03)...but then when I saw this stuff, I am convinced they have a real problem with their emergency management infrastructure. They got hit a bit harder than MA and RI, but the discrepancies are too much to ignore, especially when you compare neighboring border towns.

If I did not know any better I would almost think you were trolling Ct posters LOL

[CoastalWx]

Was the coastal flooding worse then Gloria because it hit during high tide, or comparable? It looked like the perfect storm of east winds piling up the water, and then the southerly winds to bring it onshore.

[CT Rain]

They've got 900+ crews now working in the state. Again, not sure what else people expect as this is really a matter of time and labor. There's only so fast you can clean up big trees that wiped out poles, lines, and transformers, and replace all that infrastructure. The issues are generally in the small towns in the eastern part of the state. These small towns don't have many people/power customers, and themselves have pretty small public works crews that normally would go out and at least clean up the trees and get the roads re-opened - that's not a CL&P issue (they're not a tree company after all), it's a local issue. Also, it can't be that surprising that they'd start in more urban areas where they can get the most bang for the buck where they can quickly restore the greatest number of customers. Plus the urban areas provide most of the tax base in the state, so I'm sure the state government (which is already broke) is looking at it as would I rather a small town like Scotland go without power or somewhere like Hartford? I think they need to start scaling back the resources in the northwestern part of the state which now has few outages and get them immediately to the eastern part of the state where it appears they've done nothing which is pretty ridiculous going on day #4 even for middle of nowhere towns.

Editorial in the Courant about lackluster response

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-ed-irene-utilities-20110831,0,105837.story

[snowman21]

If I did not know any better I would almost think you were trolling Ct posters LOL

I'm not and most of my family is in the dark right now, some not able to even get out even with a full tank of gas in the car. I've experienced week plus outages after both Gloria and Bob, so I know it sucks. I agree that the response across the eastern half of the state, notably the smaller towns, has been abysmal. At the same time, the response is going to be population and money weighted. That's just the way it always has been and always will be unfortunately. I'm not sure who people can complain to. The smaller towns have less services and without a competent public works clearing the trees and getting roads re-opened, CL&P is just driving past a lot of those towns because it's such a mess. What I wonder is where is the state DOT? That's 600 guys with heavy equipment that could be out helping the smaller towns. Maybe they are, I don't know, but I haven't heard much about them getting involved.

[CT Rain]

Was the coastal flooding worse then Gloria because it hit during high tide, or comparable? It looked like the perfect storm of east winds piling up the water, and then the southerly winds to bring it onshore.

Surge was 4-5 ft at the tidal gauges in the Sound. Tack on an extra foot for the astro tide and the perfect timing of max surge at high tide and you had the bad surge.

Gloria's surge was 5-7 ft at the tidal gauges but occurred at dead low tide and resulted in minimal flooding.

[CT Rain]

I'm not and most of my family is in the dark right now, some not able to even get out even with a full tank of gas in the car. I've experienced week plus outages after both Gloria and Bob, so I know it sucks. I agree that the response across the eastern half of the state, notably the smaller towns, has been abysmal. At the same time, the response is going to be population and money weighted. That's just the way it always has been and always will be unfortunately. I'm not sure who people can complain to. The smaller towns have less services and without a competent public works clearing the trees and getting roads re-opened, CL&P is just driving past a lot of those towns because it's such a mess. What I wonder is where is the state DOT? That's 600 guys with heavy equipment that could be out helping the smaller towns. Maybe they are, I don't know, but I haven't heard much about them getting involved.

Whoa this is totally off base and totally wrong. Unless CL&P comes first they're unable to touch any trees that are on wires or took wires down. Most small towns have cleared everything they can (and in most cases the small towns are better at doing it than the larger towns) but it's the slow response by the power company that leads to slow reopening of roads.

Unless you've driven around the affected area and talked to CL&P, linesmen, first selectmen, and tree crews in those towns you really have no idea what you're talking about.

[free_man]

They've got 900+ crews now working in the state. Again, not sure what else people expect as this is really a matter of time and labor. There's only so fast you can clean up big trees that wiped out poles, lines, and transformers, and replace all that infrastructure. The issues are generally in the small towns in the eastern part of the state. These small towns don't have many people/power customers, and themselves have pretty small public works crews that normally would go out and at least clean up the trees and get the roads re-opened - that's not a CL&P issue (they're not a tree company after all), it's a local issue. Also, it can't be that surprising that they'd start in more urban areas where they can get the most bang for the buck where they can quickly restore the greatest number of customers. Plus the urban areas provide most of the tax base in the state, so I'm sure the state government (which is already broke) is looking at it as would I rather a small town like Scotland go without power or somewhere like Hartford? I think they need to start scaling back the resources in the northwestern part of the state which now has few outages and get them immediately to the eastern part of the state where it appears they've done nothing which is pretty ridiculous going on day #4 even for middle of nowhere towns.

This sounds reasonable. The crews started Monday AM and it is now two days later.

We live in a society that obviously has developed an entitlement streak more and more, so maybe it is a social thing in alignment with the portions of CT still w/out power? Since the urban areas were likely restored first (closest to the main lines), much of the rest may be, impatient yuppies.

That's not to say it is true, just a guess from looking from the outside.

[snowman21]

Editorial in the Courant about lackluster response

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-ed-irene-utilities-20110831,0,105837.story

That's nuts how fast power came back for people in other states. Don't CT residents already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country? Wonder if the state ever uses stats like those to point out to CL&P that it is possible to get power back on quicker when CL&P claims otherwise? I'm sure the state will do a thorough investigation that will result in some 500 page double spaced document that doesn't say much of anything other than Connecticut has a lot of trees and we only have so many people to work on the power lines case closed.

[Mr Torchey]

This sounds reasonable. The crews started Monday AM and it is now two days later.

We live in a society that obviously has developed an entitlement streak more and more, so maybe it is a social thing in alignment with the portions of CT still w/out power? Since the urban areas were likely restored first (closest to the main lines), much of the rest may be, impatient yuppies.

That's not to say it is true, just a guess from looking from the outside.

Whats a yuppie? I have heard of a bubble guppie, but never a yuppie? Oh wait you mean that term from the 80s? One of the most "elite" towns in all of Ct, Darien, only has 3 crews working according to a police statement, guess the whole money>get your power back fast theory may not be true?

[CT Rain]

That's nuts how fast power came back for people in other states. Don't CT residents already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country? Wonder if the state ever uses stats like those to point out to CL&P that it is possible to get power back on quicker when CL&P claims otherwise? I'm sure the state will do a thorough investigation that will result in some 500 page double spaced document that doesn't say much of anything other than Connecticut has a lot of trees and we only have so many people to work on the power lines case closed.

Well the state doesn't regulate power restoration like they do land-line phone restoration. That's something they can attempt to regulate. You can be assured they'll hold hearings on it.

The fact that CL&P has cut 10-15 percent of their linesmen since Gloria and the state's population has increased 15% is cause for concern, especially when you see how quick the response has been in neighboring states and towns.

This morning CL&P said the restoration effort will cost 75M and they're going to try to raise rates to pay for it.

[free_man]

"It looks like a matter of simple math. There haven't been enough crews on the road in Connecticut."

It may be this simple, or it may not. I would guess that it is not the only issue at play. The 800k people out of power in MA may have been fewer problem areas, whereas an issue is fixed and a portion of customers can resume service from a different grid while other lines are repaired. It is possible the CT damage is more widespread, therefore the # of customers out is less signficant than the amount of damage as far as resuming service.

[CoastalWx]

Surge was 4-5 ft at the tidal gauges in the Sound. Tack on an extra foot for the astro tide and the perfect timing of max surge at high tide and you had the bad surge.

Gloria's surge was 5-7 ft at the tidal gauges but occurred at dead low tide and resulted in minimal flooding.

That's what I thought, thanks. Those image are sad, but there is a reason why I would never have a beach front home. It just isn't worth it.

[CT Rain]

"It looks like a matter of simple math. There haven't been enough crews on the road in Connecticut."

It may be this simple, or it may not. I would guess that it is not the only issue at play. The 800k people out of power in MA may have been fewer problem areas, whereas an issue is fixed and a portion of customers can resume service from a different grid while other lines are repaired. It is possible the CT damage is more widespread, therefore the # of customers out is less signficant than the amount of damage as far as resuming service.

But the number of crews per customers working is telling. i think that was the point of the editorial.

[Mr. Windcredible!]

Looks like some progress was made in the eastern part of CT overnight. A lot of towns that were 95-100% without power last night have seen 10-30% of their power restored. CL&P saying by Saturday total outages should be down to 100k...I wouldn't be surprised if they beat that number. I think what was frustrating yesterday...was it simply looked like no progress was being made out east. Combine that with the reports from some saying they haven't even seen a utility truck since the end of the storm painted a grim picture of the response out that way. Obviously things are moving slower than they are out west...but I think several have already commented why that's likely the case.

[CT Rain]

That's what I thought, thanks. Those image are sad, but there is a reason why I would never have a beach front home. It just isn't worth it.

Unless you have the money to rebuild it when it collapses lol.

The more time that goes on the more destruction we see. Lots of buildings re-built or just built after 38 were destroyed. Madison, Guilford, Branford, East Haven, Milford all in really rough shape.

[snowman21]

Whats a yuppie? I have heard of a bubble guppie, but never a yuppie? Oh wait you mean that term from the 80s? One of the most "elite" towns in all of Ct, Darien, only has 3 crews working according to a police statement, guess the whole money>get your power back fast theory may not be true?

I dunno looking at the CL&P map it looks like the money towns have a heckuva lot less black and dark purple shading than say from Guilford east which is almost all black denoting nearly a complete blackout.