NORWALK, Conn. Connecticut Light & Power has been getting a consistent message in the wake of Hurricane Irene. "Communication and coordination, those are the big things we're hearing," said Mitch Gross, CL&P spokesman.
The company got much of that during a hearing before the Connecticut General Assembly last week. Mayor Richard Moccia contributed his opinion later in a letter to the local delegation.
"The local response by CL&P management and crews and the associate communication with the city were entirely praiseworthy," Moccia wrote. "The same cannot be said for central corporate management of the power company. It is clear the company responded after, rather than before the storm, to bring in additional crews to clear outages. Waiting until two or three days after the storm to call in support crews from unaffected states delayed ultimate ability to restore power."
But Gross took issue with the mayor's statement.
"That's absolutely not true," Gross said. "I've told everybody that. We had crews working as the storm was making her way up the coast. Saturday night they were out working all over the place."
Moccia made it clear in his statement that he was happy with CL&P employees who were in Norwalk but not with their supervisors. "Upper management that did visit the scene were clearly unaware of the street level numbers and response efforts," he wrote. "Perhaps well intentioned, these efforts were counterproductive to our work to understand the extent of the devastation or to restore power. I awarded our local response team a B plus in responding to the storm. CL&P should share the high mark thanks to its own local planning and response, but without sufficient planning from headquarters."
Gross said Moccia's statement was balanced and matched what the company has been hearing. "We did a lot of things well, we did a lot of things not so well," he said. "We need to do a better job of telling town officials and our customers what's the situation in their particular community. ... We've heard it loud and clear. Things need to improve. We get it."
Contact reporter Nancy Chapman at [email protected].
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