Outages Down to 72 Customers

After a 12-day, monumental effort to stay warm, fed and safe, power has been restored to all but 72 Farmington residents.

In the past 48 hours, CL&P reached its final estimates for power restoration, bringing service back to 70 percent of customers Monday night and 99 percent Tuesday night. It was the fourth self-imposed deadline the utility had given, after blowing through the first three.

Town employees are finally getting a chance to catch up on work and sleep after working round the clock since the storm began.

Police Chief Paul Melanson, Lieutenants William Tyler and Marshall Porter, Town Manager Kathy Eagen, Director of Fire and Rescue Services Mary-Ellen Harper spent countless hours in the town’s emergency operations center, upstairs at the police department. Other department heads convened throughout the day, then disbursed to run clean-up and emergency efforts.

“Everyone picked up and did what they had to do. We had engineers serving breakfast and staff members here on weekends; people driving to pick up residents from their homes,” said Assistant Town Manager Erica Robertson.

Dozens of residents have cited the efforts of another town employee, Nancy Parent, who organized much of the comfort and security residents enjoyed during the outage. Normally she oversees the town’s social services, helping residents in need and caring for local seniors but in the past week, she moved in with them.

With the help of recreation department employees and volunteers, Parent set up the emergency shelter at Farmington High School, where about 500 people slept during the power outage and 2,200 found warmth, showers and somewhere to charge cell phones.

When Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman visited the shelter, Virginia Noveck pulled her aside and insisted she hear about Parent’s heroism.

“Nancy Parent has been fantastic. She was here at the door to welcome me and she has been here taking care of everything we need ever since,” she said.