Butler Says CL&P Could Miss Another Deadline

Despite 2,836 crews working throughout the state to restore power Monday, Connecticut Light & Power President Jeff Butler said that more than 44,000 customers of the utility were still in the dark Monday morning from last weekend’s freak October snowstorm and that it appeared of 99 percent power restoration for all customers by midnight Monday either.

“We continue to be focused on and executing a plan to bring all towns to 99 percent restored by midnight tonight, however given the extent and complexity of the damage in the areas hardest hit by the storm we may not be able to achieve this goal,” Butler told a group of reporters at the State Armory in Hartford Monday morning.

Butler said that as of 6 a.m. Monday morning there were still 20 towns serviced by the utility that were below 90 percent power restoration, which he said were the hardest hit areas of the state like Simsbury, Avon, West Hartford and a number of towns in Tolland County. Click here to view CL&P’s full outage map.

“Those areas are extremely hard hit,” Butler said.

Many of the towns that still had high percentages of outages Monday morning are the same communities that have complained of an absence or lack of crews in their area, but Butler said the delays were primarily due to the amount of storm damage those areas received.

“There’s a lot of challenges out there. There’s a lot of damage out there,” he said. “This is the worse storm to hit the state ever.”

Butler said that 14 CL&P serviced towns were between 90 and 94 percent restoration Monday morning, 24 towns between 95 and 99 percent, and 91 towns were above 99 percent restoration, totaling 10,037 customers in those areas still without power.

“We’re doing everything possible to get power restored to customers as quickly as possible,” Butler said. “We’re not releasing crews until we get all customers restored.”

Butler said that the utility still believed it could return power to 100 percent of its customer base damaged by the storm by midnight Wednesday 

“We still expect to achieve 100 customer restoration by Wednesday night,” he said.

Earlier during the press conference, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said that officials from his office and Attorney General George Jepsen’s office would be meeting with representatives from Monday, a consulting firm led by former FEMA Director James Lee Witt, that Malloy has asked to conduct a review of CL&P and United Illuminating’s response and preparedness to the storm. Malloy says the review will be completed by Dec. 1.