My Town Was Declared A State of Emergency

In storm's wake, half lack power
State hit hard by winter gale

February 27, 2010 - 7:41 am

It may take a week for power to be fully restored after a storm brought hurricane-strength winds to New Hampshire, leaving about half the state in the dark, Gov. John Lynch said yesterday.

High winds hit the state Thursday night and yesterday morning along with heavy rain, part of a winter storm that knocked out power to more than 1 million customers across the Northeast.

Lynch declared a state of emergency, activated 50 soldiers from the National Guard and described the storm as second in severity only to the 2008 ice storm that left more than 400,000 customers across the state without power.

About 340,000 homes and businesses were without power yesterday, Lynch said.

"This was a significant event, and it looks as if New Hampshire was hit particularly hard in comparison with surrounding states," Lynch said yesterday on a conference call from the Caribbean, where he was on vacation.

Lynch traveled earlier this week to the island of Anguilla, near Saint Martin. He said he planned to return to New Hampshire on the "first available flight," which he said was today.

The storm brought gusting winds of about 60 miles an hour to the region, with a maximum wind speed of 91 mph recorded at the Isles of Shoals, east of Portsmouth, the National Weather Service said. A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of 74 to 95 miles per hour.

Crews at work

Hundreds of crews, many brought in from out of state, were working yesterday to restore service, Lynch said.

By last night, 256,000 Public Service of New Hampshire customers were still without power. Unitil was working to restore service to 7,100 customers in the Concord area and 24,000 in the Seacoast, and National Grid had about 5,800 New Hampshire customers still in the dark. New Hampshire Electric Cooperative had about 18,000 without service.

"I think they're aggressively doing everything they can to restore power," Lynch said.

PSNH has about 490,000 customers in the state. "They expect to see a lot of progress Saturday and Sunday, but worst case, according to PSNH, there will be customers who go without power for a week," Lynch said.

Crews may be hampered by "sloppy weather" expected to continue through Tuesday, said Christopher Pope, the state's director of homeland security and emergency management.

Snow and rain showers are possible in the Concord area through the weekend, the weather service said, but more severe weather wasn't expected.

Lynch encouraged residents to plan to stay with family or friends if they were left without electricity.

"We urge all of our citizens to prepare to be without power," Lynch said yesterday.

Fourteen local shelters opened across the state, and Red Cross shelters were opening last night in Concord, Manchester, Keene and Rochester, said Mary Ann Cooney, deputy commissioner at the state Department of Health and Human Services.

Widespread damage

The damage was worst in the Seacoast and southern New Hampshire, Lynch said. No injuries or deaths were reported.

An overnight fire at the vacant Surf Motel in Hampton Beach was fanned by the winds and engulfed an entire block, but it didn't cause any injuries.

Fifty state highways and about 100 local roads were closed by fallen trees and other debris, said state Transportation Commissioner George Campbell, and crews were clearing them yesterday.

Some nighttime flights were redirected from Manchester-Boston Regional Airport because of the winds, but the airport was operating without significant delays yesterday, said Brian O'Neill, deputy airport director.

"The roof literally blew off" at a state printing and storage facility on Hills Avenue in Concord, Lynch said, causing more than $1 million in damage.

Though Concord Hospital reported no damage from the storm - "operations are running as normal," spokeswoman Jennifer Dearborn said - fallen trees closed part of Pleasant Street, along with Kensington and Rum Hill roads.

A portion of South Street was blocked by an uprooted tree for much of yesterday, and smaller streets surrounding White Park were also barricaded. General Services Deputy Director Phil Bilodeau said yesterday morning that city crews were working to barricade streets with fallen wires until utility companies came to repair them.

"Our tree crews, road crews, are not permitted to work with a tree or clean a tree that has wires in it," Bilodeau said.

On North Main Street near the intersection of Interstate 393, a number of businesses were without power yesterday afternoon.

Cashiers at Cumberland Farms, which bagged its pumps at 7 yesterday morning, sat in the dark, ringing up cigarettes and potato chips with a calculator and clipboard. Laconia Savings Bank and Merrimack County Savings Bank were closed, and several stoplights were dark. One at the corner of Main Street and I-393 had fallen, and crews were working early yesterday afternoon to right it.

Further south on Main Street, most businesses had escaped lasting outages. In stores and on the sidewalks, the storm was on everyone's mind.

"I even said to myself, those are 70 mile-an-hour winds out there," one man said to another as the two walked toward Pleasant Street.

The storm left Main Street with certain oddities, including piles of rubber scraps strewn across the sidewalk in front of Citizens Bank.

Concord fire Chief Dan Andrus said the scraps came from a roof across Main Street. Like others who passed the heaps, roped off with yellow caution tape, Mark Frazier stopped and stared. "I moved here from North Carolina, and I've been through real hurricanes," said Frazier, 50.

Still, Frazier, who lives on South State Street, said he found it "scary" when his couch started shaking last night. He later lost power.

Flooding in some areas

On the banks of the Suncook River, losing power was only half of the equation for many residents recovering from the storm.

A generator rumbling in his driveway, Allenstown resident Tony Lorina gazed nervously at the creeping water that had already consumed about 10 feet of his property.

"It's close, it's very close," Lorina said yesterday afternoon. "This would be the third time."

In 2006 and 2007, Lorina and many of his Riverside Drive neighbors experienced back-to-back floods. About noon yesterday, the water had jumped one wall at the edge of his property and was brimming near the top of a 6-foot stone barrier.

"This is my last line of defense," Lorina said.

For many, yesterday brought up second-guessing about whose homes were bought out by the federal government after those floods, a contentious issue in the riverfront community. Dale Graveline, who was lining sandbags just feet from his home as his backyard trampoline floated in river run-off, pointed to a neighboring property that was bought out but relatively safe.

Graveline's son, Tyler, had called him at work about 10 a.m.

"He said, 'Dad, you better come home, the water's coming up," Graveline said.

Some rivers and streams across the state were swollen by the rains above flood stage, Lynch said, but most crested yesterday and "we don't anticipate any widespread flooding."

Lessons of 2008

The scale of the power outages recalls the December 2008 ice storm that left hundreds of thousands of customers across the state without power, in some cases for weeks.

After that experience, Unitil completely revamped its procedures for dealing with storms to focus more expressly on restoring power safely and quickly, said company spokeswoman Stephanye Schuyler.

"We're a completely different company in the way that we prepare and respond to storms," she said yesterday. "That was the most significant lesson learned."

All of Unitil's employees now have storm assignments, Schuyler said. "Someone who might be an accountant by day is helping with procurement of hotel rooms for out-of-town crews, for example."

Another lesson from the 2008 storm, Pope said, was that utility companies must communicate better with customers as well as state and local officials.

Lynch agreed.

"I think we will end up seeing the utility companies working hard to over-communicate," Lynch said.

(BEN LEUBSDORF, Matthew Spolar and Maddie Hanna contributed reporting to this article.)



At my apartment the power kept flickering on and off. Jess and I thought it was a good idea to watch paranormal activity. It actually wasn't. So scary!