Letter From the Town Manager: Nov. 10

Dear Farmington Resident,

Storm Alfred presented the Town of Farmington with an extraordinary challenge.  The Nor’easter, which occurred on Saturday October 29, 2011 and continued into Sunday October 30, 2011, deposited approximately 8” of snow on trees with full foliage.  The snow load resulted in massive damage to the power delivery infrastructure.  In the immediate aftermath of the storm, many town roads were rendered impassable – even to emergency vehicles.  Almost 100% of the Town lost power.  Land line service utility poles were compromised and some cell towers were also impacted, resulting in spotty and unreliable coverage.  At this time, CL&P has restored service to the vast majority of the town. Outages that continue are single service issues and CL&P should have those homes restored shortly.

The Town has made and will continue to make all efforts possible to keep you, the resident, informed.  We were as frustrated and discouraged as you by the lack of straight forward and accurate information given to us by CL&P. Goals were consistently not met and it took an unacceptable amount of time for power to begin to be restored throughout town. 

Since the storm, all of your town services have been working around the clock to meet the needs of our residents and manage the recovery.  Our initial objectives were twofold:  first, ensuring the safety of our residents; and second, the full restoration of local services and maintaining pressure on CL&P to ensure that the needs of our residents and businesses (their customers)were met as quickly but safely as possible.

The Town’s public works crews deployed immediately after the storm to clear what road blockages they could.  The Town immediately requested line crews from CL&P to work with our Town crews to ensure the safe clearing of roads that were obstructed by brush entangled in power lines.  Given the scale of the damage, the Governor activated the National Guard to assist in this effort.  These efforts continued for well over a week.

A shelter was quickly established at the High School on Saturday (October 29) and remained open until November 8, 2011.  The shelter provided a safe haven for well over 2,000 residents through overnight accommodations, charging stations, meals, showers and, perhaps most importantly, information.  School Superintendent Greider’s staff and my staff, ably assisted by many volunteers, did an extraordinary job in ensuring that the needs of the community were met at this facility. The efforts of Town staff, Board of Education staff, our Volunteer Fire Department and  countless other volunteers and community members were critical to a successful shelter operation that gave those in need refuge for what turned out to be an extended period of time.

The Town’s emergency operations center remained in operation from October 29 through November 8. Daily multi agency coordination meetings were held and we participated in multiple conference calls – including daily calls with the Governor and the President of CL&P. The Police and Fire Department continued to respond to typical calls for service as well as numerous storm related calls, including two serious house fires. Thankfully, no one was injured in these emergencies.

It is also important to note that the entire Farmington Valley has banded together to continue to pressure CL&P and coordinate and cooperate with respect to what promises to be a long and costly recovery effort. The leadership of the Towns of the Farmington Valley (Avon, Canton, Farmington, Granby, and Simsbury) met continually to coordinate our efforts to hold CL&P accountable. Joint meetings with CL&P leadership were held daily to hold them accountable and press them for realistic time frames leading to power restoration. We also had several press conferences to voice our collective frustration and anger at the situation.

The recovery effort will be extensive.  The President executed the necessary declaration to make this event eligible for partial federal reimbursement, subject to further legislative approval.  We have begun to move forward with the recovery effort. The Town Council held an emergency meeting yesterday to consider and award a contract for storm debris management and removal. This contract was awarded to remove storm debris from the Towns right of way. The contractor will also remove dangerous trees and limbs from the Towns rights of way. Pick up of debris will begin on Monday November 14, 2011. Residents must bring their debris curbside for pickup. Like the annual leaf collection program, residents are responsible for tree work and debris removal on their property and must place all debris curbside for removal by the Town contractor.  Residents should not stack debris such that it blocks access to fire hydrants, mailboxes, utility boxes, utility poles, or to block visibility at intersections. Residents are strongly encouraged to work as quickly as possible to place all debris curbside. For safety reasons as well as the potential for winter weather, we must remove this debris as quickly as possible.

I want to also encourage residents to sign up for our Everbridge communication system. Everbridge allows you to use multiple means of communication for both the Emergency Alert System and the Community Notification System.  In addition to your home phone you can add mobile phones, Voice over IP landlines, e-mail and/or text messaging to be included to receive messages from both the Emergency Alert and Community Notification System.  We have learned from Storm Alfred that our cell phone and text messages could be the only form of communication available to us in a widespread power outage.  Residents can sign up for Everbridge notices at the town’s website, www.farmington-ct.org. Simply click on the Citizen Alert button on the left side of the front page and follow instructions.

As we move from the emergency to the recovery stage I hope that your life has begun to return to normal.  On behalf of the Town Council, I want to thank all of the residents for their understanding and cooperation since Storm Alfred and into the future as we continue to recover from this unprecedented situation.

Sincerely,

Kathleen A. Eagen
Town Manager