The area just recovered from Hurricane Irene and
now this happens.
People driven out of their homes by power outages huddled together in
warming centers Monday and commuters struggled to find open gas
stations while navigating the mess of downed power lines and tree
branches left by a rare October snow storm.
More than 750,000 customers in the state were without power from
the storm, which set Connecticut records for outages and snowfall so
early in the season. The storm has been blamed for two deaths in the
state and at least 12 across the Northeast.
In Hartford, commuters hunted for gas stations that were not
closed because of the outages. At a 7-Eleven, two dozen cars waited
early Monday in a line that stretched into the street and disrupted
traffic.
"I'm sitting here thinking I'm going to run out of gas," said
Mitchell Celella, 45, of Canaan, Conn., who was trying to make it to his
job as an ice cream maker in West Hartford.
Debra Palmisano said everything was closed in her hometown of Plainville and she spent most of the morning looking for gas.=
"There's no gas anywhere. It's like we're in a war zone. It's pretty scary, actually," she said.
Connecticut Light and Power reported Monday that about 750,000
customers were without power, down from more than 830,000. The utility
says it has more than 300 crews working to restore power and plans to
add 450 crews from out of state. But Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said tree
damage was five times worse than the state experienced when the remnants
of Hurricane Irene hit in August, and it could take a week or longer to
restore all power.
When Irene hit in August the weather was warm and it did not get too cold. Now you have much colder weather and if you are without power for a week it could get very ugly.
No comments:
Post a Comment