National Grid: Power may not be restored until Thursday for some in NNY
Jan. 10—WATERTOWN — It could be until Thursday until some people will be able to turn their lights back on, a spokesperson from National Grid said on Wednesday morning.
"I think it's very likely that there are going to be customers without power into tomorrow," Strategic Communication Manager for National Grid Jared Paventi said Wednesday.
It's unclear for an exact time when power could be restored.
"I can't tell you if it's 12:01 a.m. or 12:01 p.m. That's just the nature of where we are right now because of the type of damage and the severity of damage and really how widespread it is."
Paventi said they believe that at some point Wednesday they believe they will have restoration times.
Of the 177,000 customers affected across New York, Jefferson, Lewis, St. Lawrence, and Franklin counties had 64,000 of those remaining without powe.
As of 12:45 p.m. Wednesday, 26,052 customers were without power in Jefferson County according to the outage map from National Grid. They're reporting 2,307 customers without power in Lewis County and in St. Lawrence County, 8,425 customers can't turn their lights on.
"We've restored a couple thousand lost customers here and there but we know that there's significant work primarily because a lot of our lines and a lot of our equipment are off-road and we know that's going to take some time to get out to those more remote areas to do the inspections, to do the assessments so we can start beginning repairs," he said.
Part of the reason there is no set restoration time is because there are many situations where crews are still assessing the damage, Paventi said.
He also said it depends on what the repair is for how quickly power can be restored to a specific area.
"It's tough to say, especially at this early point because we don't know where the big time consuming damage is," Paventi said.
He said once crews can pinpoint the damage, then they can start clearing the debris and starting repairs.
Crews will be out until midnight at the least.
"We may go to around-the-clock scheduling depending on what sort of progress we're making today," he said.
They are scheduled to work 6 a.m. until midnight and there may be crews working overnight.
Jefferson County is also under a lake effect snow warning beginning at 1 p.m. Wednesday and running until 1 a.m. Friday. The National Weather Service in Buffalo predicts there will eight to 16 inches of snow in the most persistent lake snows.
"(The snowstorm) presents another hazard, presents another difficulty in our world, but at the same time our eyes are on making sure we get service restored as quickly and as safely as we can," he said.
Paventi said there were around 1,100 crews in their central region with "a number" of them in the north country.
They came in throughout the day on Tuesday and when it was time to go Wednesday morning they were ready.
National Grid had to wait until the worst of the storm was over until they could deploy their crews.
"We can't safely put buckets in the air when there's 70 mph winds," he said. "But before we can do repairs, we have to get out there and assess, right? And you can't put a damage assessment crew in the middle of a field at four in the morning because of light. So we made the determination that crews started rolling at six. We were out on the road to get out to these areas to start getting an idea of what sort of damage was out there...We can't have someone climb a pole when there's 70 mph winds ripping through downtown Watertown. It's just unsafe. And we're not going to risk the safety of our crews or the safety of the public."
He said safety is "the most important thing they consider."
Some crews may have been out on Tuesday night, but most of the work that was going to be done had to wait until wind subsided Wednesday morning, Paventi said.
"What you don't want to have happen is a crew spend two or three hours making a repair, finishing the repair and then having the line break again," he said.
Setting a pole could also be difficult because they would need to use a crane, which Paventi said they don't want to be unstable.
"For the safety of our crews, safety of the public, and really just for the expediency we can get people back online, get service restored, especially in a wind event like this, we're very likely going to wait until the worst of it is in the rear-view mirror," he said.
There is no steadfast rule from National Grid where if winds get to a certain mile-per-hour that they pull crews off the road. Paventi said they rely on the crews on the scene to tell them if it's safe.
"If a crew feels a situation is unsafe for some reason, we trust their judgment. We'll follow what the crew says if it's a situation where they do not feel safe putting a bucket in the air because of wind speeds, we follow that because they're the team that's in the field," he said. "We want every line mechanic, forestry technician, and damage assessor that leaves in the morning to come home."
The colors that people see on the outage map indicate the number of people affected by a specific outage.
Green is the least amount of outages, then blue, purple, yellow, and red.
To stay safe, people without power should use flashlights instead of candles, and stay away from downed wires. Those that see a downed wire should call 911, Paventi said.
"If it's in a street, if it's in a roadway, don't drive over it, call 911 and report it. There's going to be a lot of them down and there's no reason to get near them. Keep yourself away from them, keep your pets away from them because we don't want to see any fatalities come because people coming in contact with it," he said.
Dry ice and bottled water are available from National Grid at the Watertown CitiBus garage, the Jefferson Community College Education Center in Lowville, and the Star Lake Fire Department in Star Lake from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.
National Grid is also urging customers to remain patient as they work to get power back online. Drivers should also yield to National Grid workers and give them room to work.
