MONROE, CT — High winds from today’s storm knocked out power to 493 town residents as of 4:17 p.m., according to the Eversource Energy Outage Map.
“The forecast is for high winds until earlier tonight,” First Selectman Ken Kellogg said late Wednesday afternoon. “I expect there will be some outages as a result.”
At approximately 4 p.m., an Eversource crew and firefighters headed to the corner of Purdy Hill and Cutlers Farms roads for a possible transformer issue.
Kellogg said one power outage in the center of town identified tree limbs as the cause and Eversource estimated the time of restoration to be 6 p.m.
In a briefing the first selectman received from the Connecticut Eversource Liaison Organization Team Tuesday, the power company said it was making staffing plans in preparation for the storm, bringing in extra staff and external crews, as well as more equipment.
Eversource said preparations were for a strong cold front that “will move through the region bringing hazardous wind and rain Wednesday afternoon into Thursday evening.”
Eversource said hazardous winds up to 50 mph are predicted to occur ahead of and behind the cold frontal passage throughout the state, especially along the coast and in higher elevations.
“We may see damage to electric lines and equipment from trees and tree branches,” the briefing said.
Eversource told town officials the CT IMT would activate its Emergency Response Plan (ERP) at an Event Level 5 at noon Wednesday (today), indicating up to 125,000 state customers without power and up to 3,000 trouble spots on its system.
The rest of the update reads:
- Field staffing plans are in place and additional internal staffing, external crew acquisitions and material resources have been secured.
- Employees are being notified of the potential storm and to prepare for storm restoration duties.
- We have staged additional resources for Thursday morning to manage cleanup from the storm.
GAS OPERATIONS: Emergency Response Plan (ERP) Incident Level: ERP Level: N/A – Normal Operations
- Gas Operations does not anticipate significant system impacts and is ready to activate the Gas IMT and assist electric restoration as needed.
PRE-STORM COMMUNICATIONS
- Outbound calls to medically coded customers will be completed today (Tuesday).
- Regulatory Affairs is in contact with state regulators.
- Eversource Community Relations will be working with municipal officials to address any priorities.
- Social media is focused on sharing how customers can prepare for the weather and report an outage.
- The home page of Eversource.com will switch over to display storm preparedness information and quick links to the outage map.
